As a someone who adores all things Terminator I can’t help but recommend this epic, genre defining shoote...nah I can’t keep it up. This game is terrible. Terminator Salvation doesn’t try anything new, and in the end, offers an unsatisfying experience that leaves a bitter taste.

I feel like I have to preface this review by saying that I played the game on hard mode from the get-go. Surely this is irresponsible for a game reviewer, right? Well, no. Arguably the game’s biggest claim to fame is its easy 1000/1000 achievement points or platinum trophy. If you aren’t interested in either of those two things then check out a review on another site or (probably a better idea) just skip this game. This review is built for someone who is only interested in this game for its trophies; which I’m guessing is probably most of you.

Terminator Salvation is a – stop me if you’ve heard this before – 3^rd person, cover mechanic based shooter. The plot revolves around John Connor on a mission to save a group of resistance fighters, who are trying to bring down the evil Skynet robots. The plot is okay, but all of the characters have such little development time (the game can be completed easily in one 4 hour sitting) that they just end up looking like they have really weird social links to each other, two people that meet each other for the first time will, within ten minutes, be BFFs.

The best bit about Terminator is the shooting. Tackling ‘spiders’ by going behind them and hitting their weak spot is pretty satisfying, especially in the game’s co-op mode, but the thing is, that’s seemingly all you do for 90% of the game (the other 10% I will cover in the next paragraph). There are only, get this, 5 enemies; Spiders, T-600s, T-800s, Aerostats and Hunter Killers (whom make up the sole cast of the game’s boss battles). This causes the combat later in the game to become repetitive, which led the developers (GRIN) to think, “hmm the cover mechanic based shooting is okay, but you know what’s great in games, vehicle sections”. How wrong they were.

Terminator’s vehicular sections are by far the most vomit inducingly appalling parts of this game, and probably any game this side of 2008. There are probably about 4 or 5 of these monstrosities in the game, one of them okay – firing RPGs out of the back of a train - the others horrifically bad. For example, one of the sections is a mind-fuck inducing mech-style mini-game that involves shooting at enemies with rockets and turrets while moving automatically through a level. While it doesn’t sound bad, the screen is painted in a Virtual Boy style; orange background that not only gave me and my co-op partner a headache, but also made the Hunter Killers that fly around far in the distance, slowly sapping my health, impossible to distinguish from the fog that they hover in.

Another “highlight” is the grenade-turret section which features vehicles which hover above the ground, even though they have wheels. It was here I decided that literally no quality control time was spent on the game. I don’t really blame them, at this point in the game, about 60% through, it was time to just tie up all the loose ends and abandon this cluster-fuck of a game.

I’ll wrap up this review by saying that while this game does have easy trophies, and can be found at a cheap price, it isn’t worth your time. This is much worse than a normal movie game, they are normally at least polished and good for young kids, but this game doesn’t appeal to anyone, even me as a trophy hunter (see: whore).

3/10

Matt

Labels: Matt, Matthew Meadows, Review, Terminator

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