Terminator 3: War of the Machines

"So much ambition, but needs so much more work."

Hey there. What we have here is a game that COULD HAVE BEEN GREAT! It could have been EXCELLENT! I tried so hard to like this game, but sadly, I cannot. Why? Well, here's why...

Graphics 9/10
Ok, graphics in the game are excellent. The rubble on the streets, the character models (except the Tech-Com Supply guy, his face looks moronic), the weapon modeling, it all looks excellent. But that's only on maximum settings. Anything else looks like total garbage. Sadly, if you have a Geforce Mx 420, you have to have the graphics on medium in order to run the game and not have any delay's during multiplayer. But if you have something better, then by allmeans you can definatly go to max settings with no delay.

Sound 6/10
I like the sound, except for the annoying as all hell background music/ambient sounds. The heavy lazer blasts you hear in the game come straight from the movies. But anything else, nope. Remember Terminator 2? This is a perfect example. The sound the T-900 terminators make with their weapons (exact same weapons) sound nothing like it. The Tech-Com plasma rifle doesn't sound like it's movie counterpart, but is instead replaced by a fairly annoying ''DOOT'' sound. When a human character jumps only humans and infiltrators can jmp) They make a horrible grunting noise that sounds like releasing a rabid cat upon ones own testicles. Other then that, everything else is decent, but needs improvement.

Gameplay 6/10
Now this is where it is supposed to count. It was made to be multiplayer, but it could have ATTEMPTED a somewhat decent singleplayer campaign. Actually, it does have a single player, but its nothing more then a bad multiplayer game with bots. No story, no plot, no nothing. I would say the game has little to no realism (humans jump 10 feet, can fall 50 and not get hurt) yet when they are shot at, it takes 1-4 shots to bring one down using an terminator weapon. Oh I forgot about this part: Sometimes, the bots won't make attempt to even kill your character. here is a little interesting glitch though: Get into a bots face, and it won't shoot you. It won't do anything but fire around you. The AI sucks in this game. Sucks big time. The vehicles, although a novel approach, are garbage. The human vehicles are flimsy as hell, and theres a selective set for each map. The vehicles for the humans are: Jeep, APC, dune-buggy, Light truck, Heavy truck, sedan (no real purpose), cop car (same as sedan, only with machine gun mount). To top it all off, if you have a gunner and you roll into a battle guns blazing, that gunner is going to be picked off in less then 10 seconds. Manuever all you want, he's going down. The terminators use their grenades and heavy weapons, so even if your in a vehicle, you better jump out quick or its getting destroyed with you in it. The terminators have 2 vehicles; HK transport (a van) and the HK tank (from the movies).The tank is really fun to use in a MP map (that is, if others are playing, which is an EXTREME RARITY, because the bots dont use any of the vehicles. Rarely as gunners, but thats it.) The HK transport... I've never gotten into one. Don't really want to either. The Terminator class's are fairly slow, yet when they walk, their legs glide over the terrain, making it look extremely awkward. The Ariel FK (not the big jet from the movies... more like the small jets from the third film) have missles that the players LOVE to use, because it is extremely hard to hit the target with its lazer weaponry. It can fly, up down, all around, but its armor is weak as hell. It's like its armor is made of single layer tissue paper. Weapon stats are incorrect, missing animations on weapons, and the absence of death animations on the characters themselves bring the score down very low. Also, if you wanted to play as a T-800 endoskeleton, tough luck. T-900's only. You get to play as Arnolds character as promised, but he says few lines. All it is is an infiltrator on the human side.

All in all, this game was really rushed the hell out the door, and needs extreme work. It can be fun when your actually playing with other people, but since there are no dedicated servers, I guess we are all screwed. If you play with others usually though, there will be 30 second delays where when you want to reload, you go to press the r button, but it takes 30 seconds for the animation to kick in and for your weapon to actually reload. Terrible.

I really tried to like this game. I'm still trying. Thankfully, there is a group out there who has made extreme complaints, and a patch is being made to fix most of these problems. Until conformation of that patch, I would avoid this game like the plague. Try reading some reviews for it in a months time to see what the patch has accomplished, then make your own decision.

Rent/Buy?

Theres a demo out that you can download. Download the demo and try the game out, then make the decision to buy it or not.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/03/04