It's practically become a cliché at this point: If you want to make a good licensed game, don't base it on anything -- not a specific movie, TV show or ringtone. By being engineered from the ground up to work as games, releases like Spider-Man: Web of Shadows and Batman: Arkham Asylum managed to each be the best in their respective breed, unhindered by timed releases and narratives fluffed up to match a two-hour cinematic story.

Transformers: War for Cybertron not only proves this new paradigm, it surpasses it, serving up the best use of the license since Beast Wars went off the air more than a decade ago.