Terminator Salvation – Why won’t you diiiieeee!?

Five days and three reviews, yes I’ll be getting some rest sometime before the weekend, but luckily my sleep schedule was unaltered by Terminator Salvation because I finished it in 5 hours. Before I start off I’d like to formally apologise to Legendary for accusing it of being dank, gritty, brown and short because clearly I didn’t know the definition of any of those terms before playing TS. I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised playing this game, as I heard it was absolutely terrible. Keep in mind that the game is not what I’d call “good”, but there were moments of notable enjoyment that I won’t overlook simply to eviscerate it. And besides, even if you think the game is total crap and not worth your time, 5 hours for a platinum trophy is tough to beat. Yes that’s right, play through the game on hard and you automatically get 9 bronze, 2 gold and the platinum trophy, the first obtained within a few minutes. And really, there’s no reason not to play on hard, because the game isn’t very difficult. However, it is infuriatingly cheap sometimes, causing you to replay the same sections repeatedly, each time having to endure the menacing red eyes of the loading screen for longer than anyone should have to wait in order to be shot and killed yet again. Try to remember though as you read this that I played it the first time on hard, so some of my time with said loading screen may have been avoided on an easier setting while getting my bearings.

The game stars you, being played quite well by John Connor, leader of the resistance as he simultaneously battles robots called Terminators who have taken over the world post judgement day. Things don’t start off very well, with John and company getting their asses handed to them by some very large machines. People die, all air support is blown to smithereens, and the team consensus is to hightail it back to base. Once you get to the extraction point, somebody in no mans land radios the group to ask if they might journey into the robot HQ to save them. John being a big grizzled softie insists that they go on the rescue/suicide mission, and when his superiors deny him help, opts to go it alone. The only woman in the group, who I think just has her eye on the queen seat of the resistance throne room, tells John that she can’t possibly let him go die by himself, so she tags along. Along the way you meet some more survivors who are just trying to leave peacefully among the remorseless metal overlords and whom are probably better off with the union but still manage to complain about it. Fortunately for you though your party never feels bogged down because the amount of people you meet is balanced nicely by the amount of people that are mercilessly killed. Every time you get a new companion you’d better take a good long look at your existing friends, as someone will soon no longer be with us. Eventually you make it to the stronghold and the ending ensues, one that I must say was refreshing after watching Legendary’s yesterday.

Graphically, this game varies, but even the lower end of the spectrum is quite impressive. The opening cinematic is stunning, featuring a quality that I’ve only come to expect from the CG in movies, and the in game character models are great. The only downside is that they decided to use these character models to act out the cutscenes instead of making more high definition ones, and even more unfortunately is that they seem to develop stage fright when the camera locks on them and stiffen up. All of the fluid, human-like movement that occurs in game goes out the window and we’re left with characters awkwardly staring at each other while the dialog unfolds and struggles to keep in sync with everybody’s mouth movement. But like I said, there are very few instance of this, given that there aren’t too many cutscenes in the entire game, and the rest looks really good. Humans look like humans, robots look like robots, except for the type of robot that’s supposed to look like a human but I’ll let that slide. Seemingly the price the robots paid for being practically invincible to all ammunition known to man is a slight graphical downgrade from those futilely trying to take them down. They don’t really have much texture and in most locals their colour makes them blend in with their surroundings, making them seem quite flat compared to your character. This mostly applies to the endoskeletons, whose stiff walking animation just does more to shallow them out. I feel odd pointing out that the robots aren’t “lifelike” because that’s probably the point, but there’s a limit, the way they walk it looks as if they should be falling over, like they don’t shift their weight properly. Come to think about it, this is probably a good thing because if they moved any faster than they would be significantly harder to destroy. The only reason I killed most of them was because they were either feebly attempting to get around several obstacles, or had abandoned movement all together, instead hoping that their latest hardware patch had included some kind of teleportation device. The spider-like robots on the other hand have a touch more shiny depth and have much better movement, scuttling around the wastes eagerly scanning for something to machinegun into nothingness, and quite often that something was my slow ass. Lastly there are the “wasps”, which are small air assault drones that fly as if physics actually exist. Shooting these down is the most fun that you’ll have in the game based solely on the spectacle. When they die they’ll either jettison all of their main flight equipment mid-air and plummet to the ground, or they’ll spin around and take out another wasp or two before crashing into a nearby wall (and there is never NOT a nearby wall).

A gripe I have to touch on before moving on to the gameplay is the lack of variety, and what is should have meant for the graphics. There are four main enemies in the game, one just being a version of the endoskeleton only with skin. That being said, there’s no excuse why the time wasn’t put in to make the graphics and movement on these 4 characters absolutely perfect, especially seeing as you spend nearly the entire game encountering one or more of them. They can’t even claim to have been working on the other enemies, which I guess I would classify as bosses, since they come up rarely if not only once. It’s a short list, consisting of the Hunter Killers, the Harvester, the rail cars, and the motorcycles. It’s funny [sad] how this game can be accused of almost every flaw I had with Legendary, to a higher degree even, and I still had a much better time with Terminator. Now we have the almighty question of how entertaining getting from destroyed point A to repeatedly exploded point B is. The gameplay of Terminator Salvation is very repetitive. There are two types of action: run, gun and hide A.S.A.P. bullet-fest, and man the turrents while we run for our lives…fest.

The former can be summed up as very short jaunts through the rubble-laden streets that serve only to connect you from one extremely cover based firefight to another. It almost reminds me of Gears of War, but somehow being even more reliant on you getting your ass behind something that can soak up bullets. Cover is so important simply because of how fast your health drops off. Even the wasps, as the buzz around the battlefield accidentally bumping into each other, can knock off half of your health if you so much as pop your head up. Those are the weakest enemies as well, the spider-bots and the endoskeletons both have machine guns which can turn you from John Connor, full health hero of the world and saviour of mankind, into John Connor, grizzled meat shield, in a matter of seconds. Then there are the Hunter Killers who have these kinds of plasma cannons that can topple buildings, but are more frequently aimed at your face instead of just bringing the roof down on you. Still, the worst has to be the endoskeletons, simply because they aren’t concerned with playing fairly. Fed up with emptying their backpack of ammo into the wall, they will walk themselves slowly over to where you are crouched down behind cover, blind-firing an endless stream of bullets into their unimpressed frame which can take about 150 shots from the stronger machinegun, only to smack you upside the head with their guns, instantly killing you. And you can’t even attempt to run away, as the second you try, they will suddenly remember where the trigger is and fill you full of lead. Another thing you have to get used to is getting behind the spider-bots, as they can only be hurt from behind, and doing so while maintaining cover is often still dangerous. You can stun them for a fraction of a second by hitting their pixel-wide scanner on the front, but it serves little purpose. The only thing that seems to be on your side is John’s metabolism, allowing him to heal his body when he’s not under too much stress. Just as long as you’re not getting shot at, your health regenerates, and very quickly. This serves as not only an indicator as to when the fight is over, but helps immensely to get you ready for the next wave of machines, waiting just over the hill.

The later of the two gameplay types is a test in patience and tenacity as you die over and over again, each time learning a little more of the enemies movement pattern so you can kill them before they you. You will play these vehicle sections more than anything, simply because there’s no way to hide. You are getting shot at, and the thing shooting at you has quite a bit of health, meaning if you didn’t start shooting the second you saw them then your jeep is going to be a block of Swiss cheese on wheels by the time they blow up. Thankfully though, each section has at least one checkpoint, which upon death will not only start you off there, but will also refill your health, only for you to die again anyway. There really is little hope of getting through them one the first go. This being mostly due to the fact that the guns are super strong, but have the accuracy of a spread shotgun at 1000 yards. IF you hit something, it will be close to dead, still meaning you have to hit it again before it’ll actually go down, and even then, there’s probably six more behind it. The guns also have a little meter that goes up as you fire and down as you stop. This represents how hot the gun is, and will stall if the gun reaches all the way to the top and overheats. This is effectively a death sentence, meaning you can’t just hold down the fire button and sweep across the screen as I was inclined to do on my first attempt. All this makes for a very broken section of the level that pops up more frequently than I’d have liked it to.

The weapons in the runny gunny hidey section are varied, each with their own purposes. There’s the assault rifle for when you’re out of bullets with everything else as it’s the most common thing to find ammunition for, it’s the weapon you start with and is pretty weak, and then there is the machinegun, which can hold significantly more bullets per clip and does much more damage. Both of these are mainly for taking down the wasps and the backs of the spider-bots. There is also an all purpose shotgun which is usually a one hit kill for the wasps, and can chip away at the health of the others. It is however a one bullet per button press weapon, making it less practical for taking down heavier machines. For the spiders, skeletons and Hunter Killers, there are grenade launchers which do moderate damage, and rocket launchers which do heavy damage, although ammunition for both is scarce, the grenade launcher not even appearing until the 7th chapter of 9. Unfortunately, you can only carry two weapons at a time, so choose wisely. Should you take the rocket launcher with 3 shots just in case there’s a bunch of endos, or keep your machinegun and pray for a swarm of light hearted target practice wasps? You can also carry grenades and pipe bombs, which are better than any weapon and are found almost everywhere. Challenge terminated.

There isn’t much else to say about the game, it’s so short that there wasn’t any room for additional content. The verdict? Rent it, milk it for trophies and return it, only buying it if you plan on charging people to borrow. It’s not the tragedy that I heard it was, and for that it earned some points in my eyes, but the price tag is certainly not worth the moderate satisfaction and time you’ll spend on it. A good effort, but a few more levels and two, maybe three more enemies would have been appreciated. On a side note I still haven’t gotten back to Bioshock.

-AtomicPineapple