Transformers War for Cybertron is the surprise of the summer for me. I especially enjoy the Autobot Escalation map. Even with four players though, it’s a rough road. After the jump, I’ll give you my simple plan, along with some tips to keep you alive for a long, long time.

First off, here’s some general tips that you must abide by, if you want to do anything right:

• Share money – This is a big deal in the game. You can’t do it in other games with their own “Horde” mode, but in Transformers WfC, you can, so use it wisely. Share money to get much needed weapons and doors opened sooner.
• Stay inside – Stay under cover. Flyers and most enemies will be out in the open and if you’re out there with them, you’ll leave yourself exposed to multiple attackers. Get your back against a wall and you’ll stay alive longer.
• Melee is your friend – Because money is scarce, you simply must rely on your melee to do all of the heavy lifting for you. For most enemies, the melee attack of all Autobots is a one hit kill, so use it and rack up the dough.
• Try to always attack enemies with your car weapons at range. Your weapons while in car mode are potent, especially for Warpath, the tank Autobot, so use it.
• Stick with your team – It is vital that you stick together to defend each other and revive each other. If you get separated, then you’re screwed.

Now that we have some general strategies set up for you, let’s get down to a very specific strategy to keep you alive.

In the Autobot map, there are a number of doors that can be opened. My advice is to open the $700 door first. In order to do that, you’ll need to stay alive for the first 4 rounds. My favorite defensive spot is near the health and burst rifle machine near the $300 door. There’s only two ways in and they’re right next to each other, meaning that you can easily defend this area. Furthermore, most enemies will have to cross the huge courtyard to get to you, which means that the four of you can chew up any ground enemies that try to get near you.

Once your entire team has $700, open that door and head on up. There’s only one health pack and ammo pack, but you have the Energon health rifle, Null rifle and Scrapmaker chain gun up there. Immediately begin having every team member fill up the Energon rifle. The health rifle costs $1200, so everybody needs to chip in to get it up. Once you do, get it and use it and begin working on a second, because while the person with the rifle can heal others, he can’t heal himself, so you’ll need at least two.

Here’s where you can now make a choice, once two of you have health rifles, all four can begin getting a third health rifle, or everybody can save for the Scrapmaker, a beast of a gun, which costs $600.

If all four of you have Scrapmakers and two of you have health rifles, you’re in good shape. At this point, it will be around level 10 and things will start getting tough. Kill off almost all enemies in the round, and leave one alive and move to the $300 door. Open it and head up. There are ammo stations, boxes and a health box up there and another $400 door to open. Open it immediately and head down the corridor. In this next room, you’ll have the Overshiedl, Scattershot shotgun and Thermo missile launcher and one of the best places to defend in the game. The long path between the two rooms you just opened up, can be used to put a lot of distance between you and your enemies, which will give you time to chew them up as they approach you. You can last here for a good long time.

Next up? Open up that $2500 door and the other $400 door behind it, there’s a ton of free health and ammo packs up there and the best weapons on the map. Beware, don’t get caught up there, it’s the worst place to defend and I’ve lost many a match getting overwhelmed in that room. Get what you need and GTFO back to the Overshield room.

At this point, you should be fully powered up with enough weapons, now it’s time to survive. I’ll leave that up to you. Good luck!