Terminator Salvation

"Terminator Salvation: Not that bad..."

Terminator Salvation - PS3

This is a perfect example of a promising game made to suffer due to time constraints. For everything it does well, there's something you'd wished they'd included. It's by no means a bad game, but it's also not a $60 game. It was obviously made to coincide with the release of the feature film, and launched the same week to cash in on the movie hype. The downside to this is that what could've been an amazing game has turned out weak as a result. It had a lot of promise, but ultimately came up short because of compressed development time.

The gameplay works great. The controls are mapped well, and they respond perfectly. Its basic flow involves running from battle to battle, utilizing cover and the occasional turret along the way. You can only carry 2 weapons at a time (as well as your grenades). The action sequences are broken up with on-rails battles where you man the mounted gun on the back of a truck in epic escape-style shoot-outs. I wished there was more variety to the environments to the point where you could find slightly alternate routes to battle bad guys from while on foot. Just for the sake of improved freedom. The battlegrounds themselves are versatile enough to still be quite fun though. The cover system works really well too, and the minor destructability of some cover adds intensity to the battles.

The AI (both friendly and enemy) is pretty decent. I've found the enemy spiders can sometimes pin me down under constant watch, and I get stuck. My teammates manage to flank it and either distract its fire or destroy it, allowing me to get to a better position on the battlefield.

The inclusion of co-op is nice, but where a lack of time really shows through is the fact it's offline only. This game's lifespan would've been dramatically increased if had online co-op. Another thing that shortens the experience is the lack of originality with the trophies (or achievements). Playing this game on hard your first time through will acquire all of them, not requiring an additional playthrough. It's clear they had bigger issues to worry about than making the trophies more difficult to acquire, or including little collectibles hidden away in the areas (which could either contribute to a trophy or unlock extra in-game content). This game can be completed to 100% in less than a day.

The sound is good in general. The voice-work includes Moon Bloodgood and Common from the movie (though Christian Bale and his likeness are absent), the weapons effects, explosions, and vehicle noises are all decent too. They aren't by any means amazing, but they get the job done acceptably. The graphics are standard for the day. They aren't amazing, but they don't look out of place on the current platforms. They did a great job of capturing the Terminator feel, and creating a realistic representation of what you'd expect from a post-apocalypse LA.

It's fun to play, but it doesn't offer enough value for the money it costs. If it were even $40, I'd recommend it as a purchase to anyone who's a Terminator fan, but for $60 it's not worth it. The publisher would've been much wiser to let the game get roughly 6 months of extra work put into it and have it launch along side the DVD release, presumably around the end of the year. In those 6 months they could've branched the co-op into functioning online, improved the trophies, and included some hidden collectibles. It's sad they couldn't, because what the game offers is very fun.

My overall opinion is to score the game as a 6/10. What it does, it does very well, but it's the unfortunate victim of corporate greed damaging a movie game once more. It's definitely worth playing, but it's not worth buying unless you're a diehard Terminator fan, or like buying everything.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/29/09

Game Release: Terminator Salvation (US, 05/19/09)