You are John Connor, you are no longer a boy, and you now are such a bad ass you no longer need the help of a machine to help you change the future. The future is now in YOUR hands. Taking place two years before the events of the new film with the same name comes Terminator: Salvation. It is up to you to lead the resistance in the war against the machines and defeat the forces of Skynet. You won’t do this alone, however as you will have the accompaniment of soldiers and vigilantes that will assist you in fighting off the machines and leading you to the ultimate success…freedom.
Terminator: Salvation is a typical run and cover shooter that does nothing too special besides taking you into the world of the Terminator lore. You will fight T-600s, Spider droids, Wasp droids, and Hunter Killers in order to reach Skynet and shut down the operation from the inside once and for all. Along the way you will meet up with various cast members that either need your guidance, or are inspired by your actions so much that they want to help you fulfill your destiny.
The gameplay is pretty basic, easy to pick up and play, and rarely becomes frustrating enough from the A.I. point of view even on hard mode to force you to give up the fight. Visually, Terminator looks pretty good during game play, runs at a decent frame rate, supplies good lighting and textures, and some of the special effects won’t wow you, but provide enough oomph to feel accomplishment. Where the graphics take a hit are the cut scenes that are not only lower res and textured than the in game action, but don’t animate well half the time or even have the mouths move in sync with the dialog. Thankfully the game doesn’t bog you down with ridiculous long winded story fill ins and allows you to just blow stuff up.
Where Terminator goes from buy to rental status is in the game’s length. Depending on your skill level you can complete the entire game in 2-5 hours. In my case, it was 2.5 hours and I don’t even consider myself a gaming guru. For the price tag not to be budget priced is a smack in the face and an obvious “sell upon license” gimmick. Especially when the 60 dollar game and the 10 dollar movie provide the same amount of time in enjoyment, this becomes a big deal indeed. Not to mention that there is not one major boss battle in the entire game. The closest thing to one is when you fight off a Hunter Killer mid-mission, but that battle is far from a typical boss fight. Otherwise you will spend the time killing Wasps, Spiders, T-600 and Skin jobs throughout the game….and that’s it! No other enemies are in the game whatsoever. Even when you take hold of a Hunter Killer and play in “red screen” Terminator view, you still kill the same enemies. Lame! Lastly, the game does offer 2 player co-op, but only offline.
While it lasted I will admit that I had a fun time blasting through the game, but it was over in one sitting and in today’s day and age, that is uncalled for. I usually have a tough time finding enough spare time to go through a 10 hour game, and for me to complete it in one sitting is just plain silly.
So watch the movie, rent the game, and don’t let Skynet win by forking over 60 of your hard earned dollars on this title. As a movie game goes, it could have been pretty decent if there was a larger variety of enemies and of course the game was about 4 times the length. As is, we have another movie licensed game that fails to deliver the goods.
