I’m sure you’re wondering why the score for this game is displayed like a billboard at the top of this post rather than nestled snugly in its usual rut at the bottom of the review forcing you (the reader) to at least scroll over what I have to say about it before you get a visual representation of my final verdict.

Terminator Salvation has earned no such respect. It doesn’t deserve it. This game has pushed every button and tried every ounce of my patience in the four and a half dreadful hours I spent with it.

Four and a half hours? Perry, how the hell can you review a game after only spending four and a half hours with it?

Let me explain.

Upon booting up  Terminator Salvation, I had low expectations. I certainly didn’t expect greatness, but at the same time it was my full intention to be fair in reviewing this title (the same approach I take with any review). Who knows? Maybe Terminator Salvation would be a diamond in the rough, offering great gameplay that is both invigorating and fun.

Or, more likely, it’d be at least mediocre. I could live with that.

Of course, I wasn’t about to get my hopes up. It is a license-based game, after all.

So where do I begin in describing the escapade of suck I encountered in Terminator Salvation?

Actually, my complaints take their roots from the very moment the game boots up. What’s it do right after the PlayStation 3 start up screen? It loads the trophies.

Why it can’t do this on the fly is beyond me, especially considering the bland set of achievements you’re asked to complete in order to get the most out of your Terminator Salvation experience.

Here. I’ll list them for you, paraphrase style:

• Beat Chapter 1
• Beat Chapter 2
• Beat Chapter 3
• Beat Chapter 4
• Beat Chapter 5
• Beat Chapter 6
• Beat Chapter 7
• Beat Chapter 8
• Beat Chapter 9
• Beat the game on Normal
• Beat the game on Hard

And my personal favorite:

• Get all the other trophies/achievements

Of course, the game itself is just as linear as the very list printed above. There’s nothing left to the imagination, and I’ve never felt so grounded by a game in my life. You’re basically trapped within a set of invisible walls. You can’t even jump. Personally, I think jumping should be mandatory in every game these days. How can I play an RPG where my character can soar through the air like Larry Bird, but I can’t hop down a ledge to save my dying war-buddy during co-op play?

Instead, I’m forced to saunter around the corner, taking a good twenty seconds longer to save his ass rather than doing what any normal person would do and leap down the rubble to his rescue.

I’ve played rail-shooters that offer more freedom than Terminator Salvation, and that’s saying a lot.

Which brings me to my next set of qualms. The rail shooting portions of the game are horrific, and Terminator Salvation has them in spades. While the rest of the game is relatively easy, the rail shooter segments have you relying more on dumb luck than any amount of skill.

A friend of mine was foolish enough to join me in co-op mode where we spent an hour struggling to defend a disheveled subway tram from Gatling guns and laser beams. What were we armed with? Rocket launchers.

Sounds pretty sweet so far, but you quickly realize that waiting five seconds between each shot is an honest-to-God nuisance. It also relies you to be dead-on with your aim, which is literally impossible in this game. We found ourselves doing better when we’d fire wildly into the air than if we’d take the time to line up a shot. Following the adage of shooting slightly in front of a moving target proved to be useless, which is kind of appalling considering that same tactic works in games as old as Space Invaders.

The camera features one of the most nauseating effects I’ve ever experienced in a game. It’s like the damn thing is resting on a set of springs. Every stage feels like an episode of COPS, with the the perspective jiggling behind you like a bowl full of strawberry Jell-O. Even when you stop moving, it continues to bob a second. Just thinking about it makes me sick, and I could have benefited from popping a few Dramamine before playing. Perhaps that would have settled my stomach.

Of course, in an attempt be artsy, the game offers moments where you can press a button to “take in the view”. Your reward is simply asinine; all this does is angle the camera upward in just about every case—something you could have easily done on your own without being teased with the promise of some greater sight.

On top of it all, the game lacks any aspect of variety outside of the frustrating rail-shooter stages, and the summation of the gameplay amounts to this:

• Run from point to point. Stop and shoot for a while. Maybe a watch a cutscene.
• Rinse. Repeat.

The cover system is kind of neat, and I would compliment it further if it weren’t such a damn hassle to get it to work just how you want it. The other issue is that you’ll often find yourself trapped in a prison of gunfire, as the enemies are relentless and never see the need to reload. You will die often in Terminator Salvation, because this game hates you.

Of course, it doesn’t make it any easier considering every time you die the level has to reload. While the load screen offers you a nifty view of a T-600 which you can skim at your leisure (well, only from the front), scrolling over the ugly fuck takes decades. You’d be better off just Google searching one and looking at that for twenty minutes.

You’d think that a game as bland and simple as Terminator Salvation wouldn’t require a full thirty seconds of load time to reload the stage you were just playing, but fuck, it does. Deal with it.

The last straw was when the game froze on me. Three times. Twice within twenty minutes of each other.

No, I’m not particularly fond of the idea of a game causing my $500 console to lock up. Eh, maybe it’s just me, but I checked and it seems like a lot of other people have been having the same issue.

I did notice that it mostly locks up in an instances of the gameplay to stopping in order to load up a menu. I base this upon the fact that every time the game locked up, it was either after I’d died or after I’d decided to exit the game to view the title screen and select one of the two game modes offered.

Yes. Only two game modes. Single player and co-op. Woo. Hoo.

They’re really not much different, only in co-op you’re granted a competent ally rather than some schmuck who will only shoot the enemy if he feels like it. And really, he seldom feels like it.

Well, technically it’s a she, but the character models are so bloody awful that if it weren’t for the boobs and voiceover, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

Which brings me to the sound. While the Terminator theme song proudly blares throughout every single battle in the game, the game lacks intensity. Sure, the gunfire sounds pretty, but the voice acting is cheesy and bland. The story is lackluster, and if the movie’s anything like this game, I’m very prepared to be bored out of my fucking mind when I finally get around to seeing it.

The Final Verdict

This game can burn in hell.

All it’s done is reestablished the fact that movie-licensed games still suck and always will suck. I can only think of a few exceptions, and those games were bloody miracles if you ask me.

Terminator Salvation lacks any sense of intensity one would hope to find in a game about mankind’s last stand against an army of bloodthirsty robots. It’s bland, tedious, and is about as frustrating as it would be to fight terminators in real life. Only difference is I’d be able to climb down a ledge to heal a buddy with my trusty EpiPen.

I can’t recommend this game for a purchase by any means. If you really want to rent it, go for it. The game could have been alright, and it’s certainly playable. But the sum of all its faults brings it to a level that forces acidic vomit to the back of my throat. It burns on the way up, leaves some nasty taste in the mouth, and continues to burn on its way back down. Yuck.

Of course, if you do opt to slide this waste of plastic into your console, I advise you to avoid playing a quality game of the same genre beforehand. I made the mistake of playing Red Faction: Guerrilla before trying Terminator Salvation. After that, I found myself cursing Terminator Salvation as I pined to play Red Faction instead.

I could go on about how you can’t skip certain cutscenes even if you’ve already seen them, or how I’d been punched through a stone bench I was hiding behind despite being several feet out of the murderous T-800’s reach, but I really don’t think all that’s necessary. My loathing for this game has been made clear enough by this point that if you really want this game, nobody can stop you—not even me.

And in case you forgot, here’s that lovely score again.

P.S. The game doesn’t have Christian Bale either. What the fuck?

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