Terminator 2: Judgment Day

"Good lord... What a mistake"

The SNES is generally considered to be the system with the best games in its arsenal. With some of the best games ever made (Donkey Kong Country, Chrono Trigger, Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past... Everyone has their own favorite somewhere on the SNES), it's hard to view this system and any of its games with anything but praise and love.

...Unfortunately, not all games released for the SNES were wonderful. In fact, some of the games were downright horrible. One of these games was Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Based very directly off of the movie, it takes a great action movie and rips it to shreds with a really badly done video game.

Gameplay
Some of the clunkiest controls I have ever used. Let's start talking about the sideview part of the game. You control Arnold's terminator robot as he lumbers about the world. You have three total buttons in the game- Punch (which is replaced with a shotgun in the first mission, and other weapons later on), kick (which is replaced with a pistol, also in the first mission), and jump, which is TOTALLY pointless. Realistic? Yeah, I suppose so. However, why include a jump function if they're going to give him a realistic white-man jump? It serves NO purpose to jump a foot up in the air.

The weapons aren't bad- you certainly never run low on ammo. Just walking around for a span of 30 seconds and I had 300 rounds of shotgun shells, and your pistol is unlimited, so no worries there. A shotgun round levels anyone you come across, although the game is sure to follow movie storyline as it says "non-lethal damage" with every person you kill. Of course, anyone who has seen the movie knows that the terminator has NO problem killing until he meets up with John, but the game writers don't think to be canon with the story, and so it doesn't flow with the movie anymore.

Enemies are numerous and obnoxious. For no apparent reason, EVERYONE has a bone to pick with you. Bikers and cops come out of nowhere, and they are COMPLETELY INFINITE. There's no end to how many bikers and cops will come out and fire at you. Now, if you remember the movie, that didn't matter because the terminator couldn't be destroyed by guns. They had to use other methods, be it the dynamite/press in the first or the molten steel in the second. Such is not the case in this game, though. These guys CAN destroy you with bullets. In what I have begun to call the "superman-game syndrome", they have taken a character with an invincibility and REMOVED THE INVINCIBILITY, COMPLETELY GOING AGAINST THE WHOLE POINT OF THE CHARACTER. If the Terminator could have been shot to death, he wouldn't have been anywhere NEAR as formidable.

Never fear, though- there's also the T-1000 on the loose to get you. He appears at random and attacks. You shoot at him until he disappears again, and he'll eventually reappear as if you'd never met and resume attacking.

Now, there's also the biking section of the game, which is equally terrible. You control a bike. Well, control isn't the word I'd use, because you have almost no control over it. You race down the streets hoping to avoid cars that are coming far faster than you'd like them to while attempting to navigate the streets using only the forward and backwards button. Took me ages just to find John Connor's house because the controls were SO bad that I drove in circles for near 2 minutes.

Storyline
Besides being noncanon on the "I won't kill anyone" part of the story, it's very verbatim. You start in the biker's bar and progress to the mall, and go through the game destroying everything that Cyberdyne systems was going to use to create SkyNet. You have to protect Sarah and John Connor while you kill everyone. Simple enough, yes?

Graphics
TERRIBLE. The graphics were not at all up to par with a SNES game. The bike scenes were laughable and as crummy as ExciteBike on the NES. The sideview screens were somewhat better, but not even CLOSE to SNES quality. Someone had to have been REALLY lazy to have graphics that weak. They remind me of the graphics of computer games released at the same time... chip's challenge, commander Keen, et cetera.

Rent, or Buy? NEITHER. If you have this game you probably already destroyed it. If you don't have it, DO NOT GET IT. It is a waste of precious time and money that you will never get back. You surely value your time enough not to spend it playing THIS atrocity.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 05/14/06