Terminator Salvation Review - Someone save me from the suck!
Terminator Salvation is a third person shooter based on the film of the same name, but seems to be influenced by Gears of War more than the film itself. The game is developed by Halcyon Games and GRIN, who also released a re-envisioned Bionic Commando on the same day as Terminator Salvation. The game takes place between Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation, following John Conner and his team through a Skynet controlled war zone. John Conner was played by Christan Bale in the film, but he refused to lend his voice and likeness for the game. Instead we get a character that resembles Commander Shepard from Bioware's Mass Effect.
The story in Terminator Salvation is non-existent, and makes events hard to follow as they are happening. You also never really get to know the characters, so it's hard to care when one of your teammates gets killed or a chopper full of strangers blows up. Characters come and go so quickly you never form any relationship with them, leaving no emotional attachment even if you've seen the movie. The only two people I remember are John Conner and David Weston, which is basically the main character and the main objective target which isn't saying much.
The controls work but get in the way, and the graphics are decent but much of what you see is reused throughout the game. The gameplay consists of running around looking for an area full of cover and green highlighted weapons, then enemies appear and you dispatch or run away from them. This repeats throughout the entire game, and attempts to break up the action with a few on rail shooting segments. Moving from cover to cover is easy to do, and the animations are realistic and fluid. When switching from cover you slide over to an edge and a radial menu will appear, allowing you to select which direction you'd like to take cover in if available. Some protective cover blocks your weapon fire, wasting ammo, grenades, and shot opportunities. You also can't pickup weapons or ammo while using cover, which forces you to make yourself vulnerable while attempting to stay alive at the same time.
There's no rebounding health bar, instead your health refills after each wave of enemies or combat segment. There's also no aim assist, which makes killing some smaller enemies and hitting specific enemy weak-points frustrating. When you're using the stationary machine gun it's easy to over-aim and makes killing anything that isn't standing still a chore. With the Rocket Launcher I've missed more times than I'd like to admit, and usually fall back on grenades and the grenade launcher. At least I know I'll hit the target, unless the cover I'm using decides to block it.
Lots of times it's hard to tell exactly where you need to go, as there's no clear objective. There's no map, no compass, and no waypoints pointing the way to objectives or checkpoints. AI Teammates rarely help with directions or combat, and usually stand around until you finally reach the checkpoint for the area. Cutscenes appear abruptly, and detach you from the action and story rather than help it along. Many times the cutscenes will refer to a new objective, but without a map or compass you really have no idea where you're heading or what you're doing. It boils down to running to a cover area, machines, running to another area, more machines, then a cutscene , environment swap, on rails shooting, then rinse and repeat.
Another confusing aspect to the game, is different teammates have different nicknames for enemies. There are five main enemy types: Areostats (Wasps), T-70s (Spiders), T-600s (Endos), HKs (Hunter Killers), and some kind of motorcycle thing. The reason for these nicknames are never explained, but regardless they are all considered machines, robots, or skynet. There's also this one giant machine you run from called a Harvester that you never even get to fight. The whole game you're killing the same repetitive enemy types, so if we couldn't fight the Harvester at the end why even put it in there? Speaking of the ending, it was so anti-climactic I didn't even realize I'd finished the game.
Terminator Salvation is a simple case of a movie licensed game using a proven game concept like Gears of War and only partially executing on it. It's a full-price game for a bargain-bin experience, and fans of the movie probably won't find their Terminator fix here either.
