Terminator Salvation Game Review: Final Report - 6.5/10
Terminator Salvation is exactly what you think it is. It doesn’t buck the trend of movie properties made bad on consoles. It doesn’t set any revolutionary gameplay standards and it certainly doesn’t win an award for graphics of the year. What it DOES manage to do despite being a movie tie-in is provide for a semi-decent romp through Terminator-ville which I for one really did enjoy.
Creative:
Let’s not beat around the bush. The graphics in this game suck. Bad. I’m fairly convinced GRIN started working on a Terminator game for an old generation system, shelved the project for 3-4 years and decided to dust it off when they acquired the rights to work on Salvation. They didn’t increase any poly counts and they most certainly didn’t do much for level design. They might have done a bit of texture work and tossed in some lighting effects but that’s most definitely about it. The game isn’t atrocious by any stretch… it just looks like the best of the old generation and the worst of the current…
The game is a similar mish-mash of ‘meh’. Let’s put it this way: It’s the first shooter my fiancée has NOT told me to turn down when she goes to bed. Because the guns sound like pea shooters and bb guns.
Gameplay:
GRIN definitely started off on the right foot with their 3rd person cover system. It’s no Gears of War but it certainly wasn’t horrible. When behind cover and you hit/hold the cover button, a reticule comes up where you can actually choose the general direction of where you want Conner to end up next. It wasn’t intrusive and worked… most of the time.
Enemy AI is pretty much non-existent. Every movement is pattern-based with the occasional idiot machine (how they take over the world, I’m not too sure) figuring out where you are and shooting in your general direction… until your squad rando-fires at that machine and they are distracted again. I actually didn’t mind this set up at all. It reminded me of the old days where in-game enemies weren’t smarter than the majority of my friends. They moved left, right, up, down and once you figured it out, you were gold. Look at this game as a puzzle… not a shooter and you’ll be fine.
Which brings me to your squad. Surprisingly, they’re not in the slow class at school. They do help out quite a bit. They couldn’t quite figure out how to distract and flank an enemy (which was a bit frustrating) but they almost always were on target and I caught myself a couple of times ducking behind cover with little to no ammo and watching the firefight between friend and foe. Of which my squad would inevitably end up winning because apparently, they are immune to death. ‘Twas a great time to get up and grab another beer.
Surprisingly the story wasn’t horrible. I mean it wasn’t anything spectacular but it was a) enough to get you involved as Conner and b) so far removed from the movie (set 2 years earlier) that they didn’t spoil anything at all. Kudos to everyone involved for that decision.
Conclusion:
Offline co-op is an absolute must. I think the only reason I survived Terminator Salvation is simply because a buddy of mine and myself were 5 beers under before we started to play. Both being avid gamers (and alcoholics) the beers certainly, um, ‘enhanced’ our ability to find the humor in everything that this game actually is. It’s not complicated and once you get past the fact that it probably is going to suck, it doesn’t look outstanding and it’s not gonna win any awards for story or voice acting, the game is decently enjoyable.
Being a Terminator fan since the 80’s this game is worth playing through if not for any other reason than to pretend you’re Conner for the 4-5 hours it’ll take you to beat it on HARD and use your imagination as you pea-shoot your way through some locales that do trigger some good memories.
And to be fair it was fun to meet some people along the way who you eventually know will be the beginning of the future Resistance. Don’t play though this game literally, play it how you want it to be and you’ll be just fine. Not to mention you’ll end up with 820 achievement points in 4 hours just for playing through the main campaign.
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