Terminator Salvation

"Why are you wasting your time with this? Oh, you must be a trophy hunter..."

Let me start off saying this...I've been a huge Terminator fan since I saw the first movie in 1990. I rented this game (as I do with many of my games) before I'm a Terminator fan and just wanted to see if it's worth my money. I can honestly say that after playing this, it holds absolutely no monetary value in my mind, and I would not think for a second to actually PAY any amount for something of this quality.

I'm not going to go into any extreme details with this game, nor am I going to break it down into categories. This review is simply to inform people to that this is far from a video game...this is an atrocity.

The AI is some of the worst I've ever come across in a game. They don't provide any sort of useful cover for you, they don't distract the enemies away from you, and half the time they don't even fire their weapons; they simply go in and out of cover repeatedly until you kill all the enemies. This makes the game insanely frustrating at times, because parts that seem simple enough become brutally difficult due to the AI being useless.

Another thing I've noticed is that no matter how well-hidden you seem to be, the enemies will somehow find a way to shoot you. No matter what lies between you and them, you'll somehow find your health going down because you're being shot around a corner. Not that it matters whether you take cover or not, because you're going to have to come out of hiding to kill the enemies since your AI buddies won't do it.

It also doesn't help that the health system is terrible as well. Unlike other games that have health that replenishes over a certain amount of time you're inactive, your health in this game doesn't come back until all the enemies on your screen have been defeated. That means if you take an unlucky couple of hits as they first come on-screen, your health will stay dangerously low until you kill them, no matter how long you stand still. There's no other way to replenish health other than kill everything and then wait for it to come back. This is simply inexcusable when some of the more difficult enemies start appearing, because there's basically no way to survive unless you do everything perfectly.

On top of all that, it seems like your character has small seizures when he's hiding, because even when nothing is shooting at you or even in your general direction, your screen shakes violently every second or 2, making it near-impossible to hit enemies who are also moving. I cannot tell you how many times I've missed with and lost because the screen shook when I was trying to shoot my enemy. Numerous times you're stuck in a certain area when this happens, and there's no way to get more rockets or other heavy artillery, basically making you a sitting duck because your small artillery does no damage to big enemies and your idiot AI friends won't even attack.

I've played some terrible games in the past 15 years, but this one is definitely among the worst. The only reason I'm giving this game a 2 and not a 1 is because I'm a Terminator fan, so the story was at least semi-appealing to me. Other than that, the gameplay absolutely ruins the whole experience. People will undoubtedly play this simply for the trophies, which I don't necessarily agree with, but I say if you can sit through this whole game without quitting due to game-breaking flaws, you deserve the trophies.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 07/15/09

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