The story revolves around Megatron using a Kill Sat named Trypticon to bombard Cybertron from the relative safety of orbit while his ground forces maintain their assault on Autobot territory. Meanwhile, the Autobots are busy evacuating their homeworld to escape Megatron's wrath, and seeking a way to weaken and neutralize Trypticon.
This game contains examples of:
- Airborne Mook: Both the Autobot Aerialbots and the Decepticon Seekers will attack from above with bombs, laser beams and blasters during an ground character's vehicle segment.
- The Alcatraz: Kaon is not only the Decepticons' main base, it also has a maximum security prison block where prisoners of war are interrogated.
- Almost Dead Guy: There was an nearly dead Red Shirt lying on the ground in the opening cinematic of the Decepticon's campaign, He moves as Megatron issues his orders and the villain promptly shoots him as he continues his speech.
- Anti-Air: The Missile Launcher is more effective at destroying air targets than the grounded soldiers.
- Arm Cannon: The playable characters can chose between a rapid firing blaster; a powerful, chargeable cannon; a powerful sniper rifle; a Gatling Gun; and a missile launcher.
- Most of the cast can reconfigure their hands and part of their forearm into four different types of weapons.
- Megatron does not transform his arm like the other Transformers, he uses and transforms the tank cannon that's mounted on his arm during combat
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Trypticon is enormous, even by the Transformers' standards, and he goes on a rampage after crash-landing on Cybertron in the Autobots' final level.
- Boom, Headshot!: A headshot with the Sniper Rifle, Cannon, or Blaster is fatal to the regular enemies, though the Destroyers require three headshots to kill.
- Charged Attack: The Cannon can fire a single round that causes moderate damage, or it can be charged to fire an explosive shell for more damage.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The Autobots are generally red with white, and the Decepticon soldiers are purple mixed with grey or black.
- Cosmetically Different Sides: Excluding their appearances, both the Autobot and Decepticon forces uses the same types of Mooks, flying soldiers and Giant Mook.
- Damage Is Fire: While this is more prevalent with the larger enemies, all of the traditional Transformers will emit smoke and be covered in a small blaze when they're nearly dead.
- Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: Occurs exclusively in vehicle mode, but .
- An land vehicle has an Cannon. a Gatling Gun, or an Blaster as the default weapon; all of which can't be aimed without changing the vehicle's direction.
- The jets use either an Blaster or an Cannon during their flights. But unlike the grounded Transformers, their weapons will automatically aim at an enemy, provided that he's more or less in front of their nosecones.
- Flunky Boss:
- Ratchet constantly calls for reinforcements after Megatron destroys each wave of them.
- Jetfire had an squad of snipers covering him during his battle against Starscream.
- Sideswipe arrived with an group of Autobots when he finds Barricade, and he never runs out of reinforcements.
- Gatling Good: Although the Gatling Gun gradually loses accuracy when firing and requires a short time for it to accelerate to firing speed, the unmatched rate of fire combined with the high ammunition capacity quickly gives Mooks more holes than a block of Swiss cheese.
- "Get Back Here!" Boss:
- Thundercracker and Skywarp appears after the destruction of an Decepticon warship. Both Air Raid and Jetfire chase the Seekers through an series of narrow passageways. Skywarp plants an time bomb at an sensitive area to distract Jetfire, while Thundercracker flies to another location in a attempt to plant a bomb, prompting Air Raid to stop him. After receiving enough damage from his attempted sabotage, he and Skywarp were chased out of Iacon for good by Jetfire and Air Raid.
- Ratchet was constantly retreating to another vantage point as Megatron gains the upper hand.
- Jetfire flies away from Starscream when he takes enough damage and eventually vanishes.
- Giant Mook: The Destroyers on both sides are slightly-larger-than-Megatron soldiers who can both take a beating and easily dish one out.
- Great Escape: As Ironhide waits hopelessly in his cell while the Decepticons mine Bumblebee's memory for information on potential targets, Air Raid causes an power outage that frees Ironhide. What follows is Ironhide killing the guards, liberating the prisoners from their cells, rescuing Bumblebee as Air Raid covers their escape from above.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The Gatling Gun Destoryers waves their namesake weapon back and forth in a wide arc rather than pointing it directly at the player. Needless to say,they die without doing an reasonable amount of damage.
- Implied Death Threat:
Skywarp: You shut your mouth Starscream or I'll silence you permanently!
- Insult Backfire: Thundercracker and Skywarp mocks Barricade for his inability to fly by pretending that he can transform into an fighter jet. Barricade remarks that at least he can coast to an stop instead of crash-landing when he breaks down in his vehicle form.
- Just Between You and Me: After Megatron disarms and corners Ratchet, he gloats about how his faction will demolish the Autobots if they don't surrender. Ratchet makes it clear that he wasn't impressed, causing Megatron to kick him into an pit.
- Kill Streak: As an reward for constantly killing the enemy, the player's weapons gradually increase their ammunition capacity and overall firepower.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Starscream insults Thundercracker for letting Jetfire escape and abandons his post to chase the Autobot. A few minutes later, he receives a verbal reprimanding from Megatron who scolds him that chasing Jetfire has left Trypticon vulnerable to attack. And Megatron also mentions that Thundercracker is the one who reported this.
- Laser Sight: The enemy snipers from both factions use red targeting lasers before firing their rifles.
- More Dakka: Compared to the Cannon, the Blaster has an faster rate of fire, reloads faster and often kills an soldier in the frame of three seconds.
- Missile Lock-On: The Missile Launcher requires a lock on at least one enemy before it will fire.
- Not Quite Saved Enough: Despite the Autobots' best efforts to evacuate Cybertron, but the Decepticons destroy an large portion of their transports.
- Peeling Potatoes: Starscream was forced to destroy the various asteroids around Trypticon when he complains about Megatron's orders.
- POW Camp: The prison block of Kaon was not only to used to incarcerate Ironhide and Bumblebee, it was also home to captured Autobot Red Shirts as well.
- Powerful, but Inaccurate: The Gatling Gun can easily kill a standard enemy in seconds, but it's accuracy will decrease after a period continuous fire.
- Rail Shooter: The character's movements in robot mode are entirely automatic, allowing the player to concentrate on shooting through the level as the Transformer at a reasonable pace.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: This happens twice to Starscream.
- He deems destroying the Autobots in the war zone create by Tyrpticon's orbital strike an menial task, Megatron promptly reassigns him from the front lines to patrolling the remote area around the Kill Sat.
- When he fails his attempted attack against his leader, Megatron punishes him by forcing him to lead an upcoming raid against Iacon: a post that they both deemed suicidal.
- Rescue Arc: The Autobots' first level revolves around Sideswipe following Ratchet's series of distress signals until he finds his partner unconscious and buried underneath a pile of rubble.
- Score Multiplier: Ranging from double points to an quintuple bonus when the Kill Streak is long enough.
- Shows Damage: The earmor of the enemy soldiers will scale from pristine and smooth to electrified, burnt and crushed as they take damage.
- Sniping Mission: Occurs whenever you have an squad of enemy snipers to kill or there's the occasional wave of soldiers with an unit or three who's just outside your effective range.
- Sniper Rifle: This weapon is the most accurate of in arsenal of four weapons that the player uses and it's the most efficient method to kill enemy snipers and distant enemies.
- Storming the Castle:
- Barricade's level involves him racing against Skywarp and Thundercracker to wreck as much havoc as possible to the Autobots' main base.
- Ironhide and Bumblebee are sent to infiltrate the Decepticons' main base to discover more information about Trypticon. They almost succeed in downloading his schematics, but then the Decepticons interrupt their download and capture them.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The Decepticon Seekers rarely get along with each other, let alone the rest of the Decepticons
- Pair Skywarp or Thundercracker with Starcream? Cue Never My Fault rants and a barrage of death threats.
- Not even Barricade is safe from this relationship, for he's on the receiving end Thundercracker's and Skywarp's mockery because he can't fly!
- Too Proud for Lowly Work: In the first mission of the Decepticon campaign, Megatron orders Starscream to report to Trypticon Station and make sure no orbital debris threatens it, to which Starscream protests, thinking he's above "grunt work," but Megatron intimidates him back in line.
- Transforming Mecha: The characters can and will switch between an humanoid robot form and a vehicle form.
- Megatron has an tank for his alternate form.
- Ironhide, Ratchet, and Soundwave transforms onto an armored car.
- Sideswipe, Barricade. and Bumblebee uses an sports car as their alternate form.
- Optimus Prime is an futuristic semi-truck.
- Jetfire, Air Raid, Starscream, Thundercracker, and Skywarp transforms into varying models of an fighter jet.
