Terminator Salvation the game is a prequel to the recently released movie of the same name. Players will take up the role of John Connor (sans Christian Bale likeness) a year or two prior to the events of the movie. It gives background to how Connor became a surrogate leader for ‘the Resistance’, while showing how some of the movie’s characters came together. The story is incredibly basic, comes off as very generic, is not particularly compelling and feels like it could be any post-apocalyptic/military story.
The game wouldn’t have been so bad if it was just an average movie tie-in, but the game is beyond basic and bland. It’s all too obvious that it was hastily slapped together. It would be unfair to give too much stick to the developers, as the core game is solid and unbroken. Unfortunately for them though, the constraints obviously haven’t allowed for them to really make something good off a solid base. In the end, Terminator Salvation comes off as a very poor man’s Gears of War.
Judging by those textures, we're in for a bleak and horrible future.
There are nine empty missions in the game that can be quite conceivably finished in a solitary sitting. So, you can be viewing the ending credits after anywhere between three to five hours, depending on which difficulty you play on. Still, the length, or lack of it, is not the most pressing issue. In fact, for someone who plays games at an excessive time premium, short games are great. Unfortunately, even in the surrounds of the gaming journalist paradigm that punishes short games for being short, there are other reasons why Terminator Salvation ought to be missed.
Apart from being occasionally punctuated by an on-rails sequence, the sole activity you have in the game is moving from set piece to set piece. Just like in Gears of War, you’ll then utilise the cover to attack and flank the enemy machines. In an attempt to get clever, the developers designed the enemy machines to be susceptible to flanking, with weaknesses on the back or the enemy focusing on one person while the other attacks. And that’s pretty much the game in a nutshell. It’s Gears of War without the variety, intensity or flair.
The cover system is easily the game’s most competent feature, though truth be told, there aren’t many more features in general. Seriously. It’s very easy to manoeuvre Connor through cover and switching between cover is intuitively handled. A shame that going over cover was overlooked, meaning a number of long-way-around trips. If that wasn’t perplexing enough, you have the grand choice of five standard shooter weapons (though you can only carry two at once) and you’ll use them against all of four different enemy machines.
WHERE'S MY WIFE!?!?!? Not here.
Well, there are four regular machines that you’ll face, as well as the occasional Hunter Killer (HK) and one sequence of a motorcycle-type enemy. The ‘wasps’ are very easy to deal with, but can overwhelm if not dealt with quickly, while the ‘spiders’, T-600s and T-600 skin models not so much. Spiders have a weak spot on their backs which is best exploited when two functional beings are playing. Unfortunately with the two T-600 enemies, they boil down to a mindless contest between your gun and their gun. And here’s a tip. Their gun does A LOT more damage than yours and rocket launchers and grenades are fairly sparse. That’s fine, but when taking one of these beasts down requires twenty-plus shotgun blasts, you know something’s up.
The AI is remarkably dull on both sides, which works both for and against you. Your AI partners never die (unless scripted) and most enemies seem content not to chase you behind cover. Still, even if you flank an enemy, your partners are conflicted over which one to attack, leaving you to wait it for the opening. The T-600s also seem to have some sort of sonic weapon built into their hands, where they wave their free hand near a barrier and you die. Handy for them, but not so much for those achievement whores looking for those easy gamer score points or trophies. You’ll get there, but the game will make you work for it. To an extent, these issues are alleviated by co-op for two players, as there is a chance for intelligent decisions to be made. However, the co-op is only split-screen.
One thing that seems to lengthen the game in the first half is the bland design that makes it really tough to figure out where you’re going. The literally desolate environments make it seem that you’re going around in circles. Another saving grace of the dull AI is that they will go and wait for you, though that won’t help if you don’t spot them. The lack of a sprint just adds to the desperate feeling for something to increase the game time. While first and third person shooters have made a lot of progress in recent times with regards to analog controls, here there are few backward steps. Thankfully, the undemanding nature of the game makes it something that you can get around.
As close as you'll get to a boss battle.
Despite the underlying competence, it’s surprising to see a game as bland and featureless as Terminator Salvation. To call the game simple and linear is an insult to games that do this well. It’s difficult to recall a game with so little to the actual gameplay, particularly in an age where terms such as variety and open-endedness are brandied around so much. Apart from the single player that can be played in an offline co-operative mode, there is NOTHING else in this game. It almost feels like it should have been on the XBLA or PSN, though this is would still be insulting to the increasingly deep and fulfilling library of downloadable games available.
Terminator Salvation would have looked impressive had it been released at the launch of the Xbox 360. The CGI cut-scenes though, would have struggled to impress on the Xbox or PS2, with terrible animation and lip-syncing. Again, like the underlying gameplay, the in-game graphics are competent, but really dull and bland. The animations are stiffer than the Terminators from 1991, while the environment textures and the like are even duller than intended. The voice actors all get the job done, though even with an insipid script, there weren’t any real stand outs. Music comes in the form of a few familiar Terminator inspired themes and the sound effects are passable.
Terminator Salvation is an anaemic effort, even for a movie tie-in, that takes being average to a new level. The game isn’t broken but coming to grips with exactly how little there is in the game itself is a staggering thought. Within the game, the story, the mechanics, the objectives and even in the game modes, there is very, very little to see and do. We can forgive Terminator Salvation from being short. In fact, more of the same dross would have been worse. It is shambolic though, that the publishers somehow justified charging a full retail price for a game that is so bare-boned. Fans of the movie and achievement suckers ought to stick to a rent at absolute most.
Loading...
