Review: Terminator: Salvation (360)

The game features a prequel storyline to the summer blockbuster and basically has a disillusioned John Connor trying to save some soldiers trapped behind enemy lines.  Honestly it’s very dull and doesn’t really feel big enough to base an entire game around, which is probably one reason the games only takes four hours to complete.

The mechanics are decent enough, being that the game is third person shooter clearly influenced by Gears of War. So we see Connor and his compatriots ducking from cover to cover and shooting at enemies who refuse to do the same, but can soak up damage like nobody’s business. Because of this, you end up fighting a series of very repetitive battles where you get in cover, shoot at an enemy who walks around a bit until they blow up, unless you have a rocket/grenade launcher to speed things up a bit. Considering your enemies are supposed to be highly advanced killing machines they seem to be lacking in the tactical department. One enemy you will come to loathe is the T-7-T. Not because they’re tactically difficult, rather the spider-like tanks are everywhere and take ages to defeat.  Their armoured front requires you to either flank behind them and shoot them in the back, or blow them up with a explosive. In theory your A.I. Team-mates should keep them distracted while you do this, but it never really works that way, so if you don’t have an explosive to hand, you end up sitting in one spot waiting for the tanks to turn away from you just so you can put a whole ten bullets in their back so they’ll blow up.   The only other gameplay element is the on rail shooting sections, which do introduce some excitement but are over rather quickly.

Pretty much every other element of the game feels rushed and under-polished as well. The animations for Connor are well done, the rest of the  graphics are bland. The game has a horrible screen-tearing problem, being noticeable in the pre-rendered cut scenes and whenever ever you fire a shot from a turret. In addition to this the music is flat and lifeless and the armoury is lacking. There are a total of five different weapons you can carry in the game, along with two types of grenades , nowhere near the amount needed to be interesting.

But the worst offender is the horrible voice acting and script. Lines are delivered so woodenly and without conviction it feels like there wasn’t any time to rehearse and they just recorded the actors reading their lines for the first time. But then again you can’t really blame the actors for not putting their hearts in it when the script contains gems like this:

Soldier 1: You hold off the robots while I set the charges.
Soldier 2: You call them robots?
Soldier 1: They're robots right, what else should I call them.
Soldier 2, speaking in a dismissive tone of voice like black guy just said the stupidest thing in the world: All right...

Bar some possible paraphrasing, where we can;t be bothered playing the game again to double check the exact wording that’s what said in one cut scene.  Now take in to note that ALL your enemies are robots, being that the “cyborg” T-800 from the films hasn’t shown up yet, what exactly is the second soldier’s problem? Do they think humanity has been fighting for survival against Smurfs?

The script also seems to have specified some completely random editing during action sequences. During one particular on rail sequence, where you blast motorbike terminators  with rockets from a retreating subway train, the scene suddenly cuts to show your train passing a set of stairs before returning to the normal over the shoulder view. Nothing but the stairs is shown in the cutaway, so we must ask what exactly was the point?

Simply put there just isn’t enough game here to justify paying full price. There’s probably not enough game here to justify it at half price. There’s worse games available sure but at least they have more than four to five hours content. There is no reason to go back for a second helping of the game, considering there isn’t even enough for the first. Just don’t bother.

Rating: 3 / 10

Words by Garry Webber