In the beginning of June, Terminator returns to cinemas around the world in the movie Terminator Salvations. Arnold Schwarzenegger is long gone, but at least we'll get Christian Bale in the role of John Connor. Warner Bros. thought it might be a good idea to give us a nice, little game to have fun with as we wait for the movie, and luckilly for all of us, the swedish developer Grin has been kind enough to give us exactly that. Well, except for the fun part of it.
You'll never really catch the story of the game, most likely because there is none. The only thing that matters is that you and your friends got to destroy a whole bunch of crazy machines, or robots, if you like. At the same time you're suppose to rescue some people that has messed it up pretty badly. Wrapped into a third-person shooter, this is, at best, a very cheap copy of Gears of War.
Because there is no doubt that Grin has tried to copy Epic's masterpiece in several ways, and where it shines through the most is in the cover system. Most of the time, progression in the game is synonymous with crouching and shooting. You can also slide from cover to cover, which actually works pretty well.
Unfortunately, that is about everything that works. When you take cover behind objects much taller than you, you will stare straight into the object when you try to zoom in on your enemies. This results in you getting killed alot, as you have to step away from your cover to get a glance at your targets, often with catastrophic result.
The dynamic in the game is also ruined by the fact that you keep bumping into invisible walls, and that Connor just can't jump. A tiny rock is enough to force this badass to find another way, and makes you feel like a lab rat, running around on a treadmill that's standing still. Frustrating is the right word here, I think.
It doesn't help on the entertainment value that the design in this post-apocalyptic world is linear and predictable. After a couple of minutes you will be able to tell what's waiting around the next corner for the rest of the game, and to be hones I think I could beat this game blindfolded. It is always obvious when and where the enemy will show, and which of the three enemy types you will encounter.
As if this wasn't enough: You are not allowed to move freely in battle either. At one point I was out of ammo, and fighting for my life I knew about a clip not far from where I was. As I backtracked to find it, "Don't leave battle!" showed on my screen, shortly replaced with "Game Over". It's remarkable how locked you are, even in a game like this.
Not very impressed? Well, there is more. In Terminator Salvation you are fighting very advanced machines, and the humans fighting alongside you are combat-experienced. Funny then, how stupid they all avt, running around like idiots with no strategy, nor considering their own safety. They keep following the same, small paths during battle, concentrating on you alone, despite being shot at from all different angles.
Because you are encouraged to attack on the flank in this game. Some enemies are indestructible unless you do so, which makes it even more frustrating that they are always looking at YOU. Your teammates are not very accurate, and got no motivation whatsoever to survive. Not that the enemy kills any of them, as they never trespass the areas they are guarding.
The enemy sometimes manage to motivate themselves to advance at your position, in which case I got to experience something rather weird. My whole team got whiped out, yet still, the dialogue between my teammates kept going on. They were talking, and even shooting (!), but as I looked around there were nobody there. I was alone, and the voices creeped into my head...
Visually there is little resemblence to 2009. The graphics is outdated, filled with flaws. We're talking flaws like "vital enemies that can't find their way to the battlefield, and you have to go find them in order to proceed". You'll also encounter enemies disappearing right in front of you, out of the blue. Fascinating!
The rather nice, post-apocalyptic world in Salvation is just a shell. When you discover how straight-forward it is it will lose it's charm. The exeptions are the sequences where you drive. These parts of the game is rather good, gives a better perspective, and the action is not so predictable.
The cut-scenes are dreadful. The script is like a porn film, just without the "oh's" and "ah's". The voice acting is expressionless and unmotivated, we're talking acting of the worst kind. This makes you care shit about the characters in the game, and for my own part I really don't care if they get slaughtered by robots. Cut me with a paper, please, I can't take much more of this!
I addition to poor acting, the game is for some reason filled with loading screens. With a couple of minutes intervals, there will be a loading screen og a short cut-scene. The cut-scenes are not only stupid, but they are there for one obvious reason: To hide a loading screen. They just don't fit in.
The sounds also seem to be made up during a late nachspiel. I experienced that the sound disappeared during dialogues, and that some dialogues got ruined due to some weird fuzz in the background. This is probably suppose to be an echo, a feature that is far too overused in Terminator Salvation. A tiny wall gives you HUGE echoes, which is just ridicculous!
With a singleplayer so flawed, I didn't expect much from the multiplayer. One of the modes are actually rather cool, and makes it a full star, not only a half. This mode is the co-op, as playing the adventure together with a friend is like being tortured together. They are not THAT terrible as you know someone else close to you is experiencing the same thing.
Grin has now given us two games in 2009, Wanted: Weapons of Fate, a shitty game, and now this. Terminator Salvation smells of hasty work, easy solutions and limited playability. The flaws are many, and in the end you don't know if you should laugh or cry.
Even hardcore fans of the series should do themselves a favor, to stay as far away from this title as possible. If you have to, watch the previous movies and play some cabal. Playing cabal is probably more exciting and varied than this piece of shit.
You'll never really catch the story of the game, most likely because there is none. The only thing that matters is that you and your friends got to destroy a whole bunch of crazy machines, or robots, if you like. At the same time you're suppose to rescue some people that has messed it up pretty badly. Wrapped into a third-person shooter, this is, at best, a very cheap copy of Gears of War.
Because there is no doubt that Grin has tried to copy Epic's masterpiece in several ways, and where it shines through the most is in the cover system. Most of the time, progression in the game is synonymous with crouching and shooting. You can also slide from cover to cover, which actually works pretty well.
Unfortunately, that is about everything that works. When you take cover behind objects much taller than you, you will stare straight into the object when you try to zoom in on your enemies. This results in you getting killed alot, as you have to step away from your cover to get a glance at your targets, often with catastrophic result.
The dynamic in the game is also ruined by the fact that you keep bumping into invisible walls, and that Connor just can't jump. A tiny rock is enough to force this badass to find another way, and makes you feel like a lab rat, running around on a treadmill that's standing still. Frustrating is the right word here, I think.
It doesn't help on the entertainment value that the design in this post-apocalyptic world is linear and predictable. After a couple of minutes you will be able to tell what's waiting around the next corner for the rest of the game, and to be hones I think I could beat this game blindfolded. It is always obvious when and where the enemy will show, and which of the three enemy types you will encounter.
As if this wasn't enough: You are not allowed to move freely in battle either. At one point I was out of ammo, and fighting for my life I knew about a clip not far from where I was. As I backtracked to find it, "Don't leave battle!" showed on my screen, shortly replaced with "Game Over". It's remarkable how locked you are, even in a game like this.
Not very impressed? Well, there is more. In Terminator Salvation you are fighting very advanced machines, and the humans fighting alongside you are combat-experienced. Funny then, how stupid they all avt, running around like idiots with no strategy, nor considering their own safety. They keep following the same, small paths during battle, concentrating on you alone, despite being shot at from all different angles.
Because you are encouraged to attack on the flank in this game. Some enemies are indestructible unless you do so, which makes it even more frustrating that they are always looking at YOU. Your teammates are not very accurate, and got no motivation whatsoever to survive. Not that the enemy kills any of them, as they never trespass the areas they are guarding.
The enemy sometimes manage to motivate themselves to advance at your position, in which case I got to experience something rather weird. My whole team got whiped out, yet still, the dialogue between my teammates kept going on. They were talking, and even shooting (!), but as I looked around there were nobody there. I was alone, and the voices creeped into my head...
Visually there is little resemblence to 2009. The graphics is outdated, filled with flaws. We're talking flaws like "vital enemies that can't find their way to the battlefield, and you have to go find them in order to proceed". You'll also encounter enemies disappearing right in front of you, out of the blue. Fascinating!
The rather nice, post-apocalyptic world in Salvation is just a shell. When you discover how straight-forward it is it will lose it's charm. The exeptions are the sequences where you drive. These parts of the game is rather good, gives a better perspective, and the action is not so predictable.
The cut-scenes are dreadful. The script is like a porn film, just without the "oh's" and "ah's". The voice acting is expressionless and unmotivated, we're talking acting of the worst kind. This makes you care shit about the characters in the game, and for my own part I really don't care if they get slaughtered by robots. Cut me with a paper, please, I can't take much more of this!
I addition to poor acting, the game is for some reason filled with loading screens. With a couple of minutes intervals, there will be a loading screen og a short cut-scene. The cut-scenes are not only stupid, but they are there for one obvious reason: To hide a loading screen. They just don't fit in.
The sounds also seem to be made up during a late nachspiel. I experienced that the sound disappeared during dialogues, and that some dialogues got ruined due to some weird fuzz in the background. This is probably suppose to be an echo, a feature that is far too overused in Terminator Salvation. A tiny wall gives you HUGE echoes, which is just ridicculous!
With a singleplayer so flawed, I didn't expect much from the multiplayer. One of the modes are actually rather cool, and makes it a full star, not only a half. This mode is the co-op, as playing the adventure together with a friend is like being tortured together. They are not THAT terrible as you know someone else close to you is experiencing the same thing.
Grin has now given us two games in 2009, Wanted: Weapons of Fate, a shitty game, and now this. Terminator Salvation smells of hasty work, easy solutions and limited playability. The flaws are many, and in the end you don't know if you should laugh or cry.
Even hardcore fans of the series should do themselves a favor, to stay as far away from this title as possible. If you have to, watch the previous movies and play some cabal. Playing cabal is probably more exciting and varied than this piece of shit.