Terminator Salvation

Jamesy

Jamesy

No. 7
21 February 2005
Dartford
Manchester United FC
Preview from terminatorfiles.com:

Gametrailers.com - Terminator: Salvation - Spike VGA World Premiere Trailer

Gametrailers.com - Terminator: Salvation - Exclusive Intro Cinema

Terminator Salvation Hands-on
Source: xbox360.ign.com

Every life is sacred. Good thing the machines aren't technically alive.

Terminator franchise is set for a reboot of sorts this May. Though it maintains the continuity of the first three films, it puts the franchise back in line with the themes of the first two Terminator movies (where the future can be changed). And the GRIN-developed Terminator Salvation could be seen as a reboot on the games side, edging the man vs. machine series away from recent scrapheap offerings. The future is what we make it and with GRIN behind the latest Terminator title, a gaming apocalypse may be avoided.

Judgment Day has come and gone. The film takes place a decade after Skynet began its war against the populace and the events of the game take place two years prior to the movie (feel free to do the math). In its early nuclear strikes against humanity, Skynet damaged part of itself and has spent the past few years gaining enough strength to put an end to air-breathers.

Terminator Salvation has mankind teetering on the brink of extinction, but there is hope. And that hope is you. Or at least you playing as John Connor, destined savior of mankind. And by John Connor, I don't mean Christian Bale. He's not licensed for this game. Instead, this Connor looks like maybe he once saw Christian Bale at the mall and wanted to dress like him and get the same hair cut. No Bale voice over either. But still John Connor. Sad news, to be sure, but as a nation, we'll have to get over it.

Attached at John's hip is Blair Wilson, a fellow bad ass soldier. Though squadmates come and go (maxing out at around eight), Blair is always with John. That's not just because the two are combat savants who make a perfect tag-team duo, but because Blair is the vessel for a second player. Yep, Terminator Salvation features split-screen couch co-op. Unfortunately, online co-op can't be included, because the machines own the Internets.

Terminator Salvation follows the popular trend of third-person action games with a heavy focus on using cover. However, it makes a lot of sense in this case. You're fleshy little humans who are, in all honesty, poor matches against the seemingly indestructible (and limitless) machines. You can't very well run and gun out in the open and maintain any sense of a connection to the series. So a cover system makes sense and all the typical elements are here--locking into cover, being able to dive or slide from one cover point to the next, using blindfire, getting your face waxed when running out into the open, etc.

While I was expecting a Gears of War clone, when I sat down to play a few levels of Terminator Salvation, I discovered something a little different. Though the levels are linear, the combat tends to have a more dynamic feel to it than most cover shooters. None of the battles I fought followed the traditional pattern of your character slowly progressing forward through cover and taking out lines of enemies that are also behind cover (seemingly awaiting an impending headshot). Instead, Salvation battles are "in the round," so to speak.

Fights are 360-degrees. The machines don't take cover--they don't need cover. And they will regularly flank you or lay heavy firepower to degrade your cover if you get too comfortable or simply go straight towards you. And just as in the movies, the machines are relentless. They have one purpose--to kill every last human on the planet. Bummer.

Making it just a tad tougher is the fact that many of the machine units are heavily armored. Unless you've gotten hold of grenades or a rocket launcher, you're not going to be able to do anything to their armored sections. In fact, your reticule won't turn red unless you can actually do damage to a machine. To make things just a bit tougher, machines such as the crab-like T-7-T actually seem aware of the fact that they can take on your measly bullets. You'll need to use your friend (or rely on your AI-controlled squadmates) to draw a T-7-T's attention and then flank them to get to their unprotected side. But several times during my hour-long play-session, the T-7-T seemed to recognize what I was attempting and would adjust its positioning just to make my job a little tougher.

I found out the hard way (by taking many bullets to John Connor's pretty little face) that ignoring the cover system gets you dead fast. There's an interesting arched HUD overlay that shows the varying options for cover, allowing gamers to easily identify where they will attach to the moment they hit the cover button. But there are still some issues with the cover system--some objects I thought I'd be able to take cover behind didn't allow the action, the AI hogged corners I wanted to use (though it is possibly to nudge them out of the way), and with no squad commands I had to hope my team could adequately compensate for any improvisation on my part. Terminator Salvation still has a few months before release, so there's certainly more tweaking and refinement to come. While not perfect, the cover system works well and the AI is surprisingly smart.

Even if you're a master of cover, you are going to eventually take damage. Terminator Salvation goes against the grain and avoids a regenerative health system (sort of). There are no health pick-ups and, in fact, no way to regenerate health between checkpoints. Finish a checkpoint and you get all your health back, but in the midst of a firefight, there's nothing to replenish that dwindling red meter. When your health bottoms out, you die, dooming humanity--way to go. That is unless you are playing co-op. In co-op, you can revive your partner as many times as necessary. The catch is that if Connor or Blair has been taken down, it's likely because they were away from cover. So running out to revive them often means leaving yourself exposed.

Terminator Salvation features all of the enemies from the movie, along with a few made especially for the game. This includes the Harvester, which is the massive metal monstrosity seen in the movie trailer. And that also means that you'll take on the flying scout drones known as Aerostats, as well as the more formidable aerial HK (shown often in the film series' flashforwards to the future), as well as "skin jobs" (machines disguised as humans). The game does take place prior to the creation of the T-800 (AKA the Schwarzenegger brand), but offers up the still-formidable T-600.

I hopped into level 8 (of 9) and took on a few T-600s. I died. As you'd expect, these bastards are tough to take down and relentlessly move forward. But they aren't as tough to kill as the later-model Terminators from the movies, so the battles aren't impossible. But you have to use cover and you must always be wary of your flank.

To give a break from having to worry about cover and enemies flanking, there are several on-rails sections. In these, Connor and Blair hop behind turrets in different vehicles (my favorite being the dune buggies) and lay down fire on pursuing machines. There's nothing particularly original about these moments, but they are pretty fun. Though I will say that some of the on-rails segments may need a bit of tuning as they are a tad unforgiving. Dying should be a rarity for the on-rails portions of a game like this, not the norm.

I've said a lot of positives about Terminator Salvation, but I do have to caution that I have only played small portions of the game. It's tough to tell how the final AI will play and if the balancing can be tuned just right so that there is challenge to the combat without making it frustrating. Visually, Salvation's not going to drop any jaws, though it's in no way an ugly game. It just lacks any of the cinematic flair seen from the most recent movie trailer. Still, from what I've played, I'm definitely looking forward to getting my hands on Terminator Salvation again. Hopefully GRIN can put a tad more pizzazz into the visuals and get the balance right. If so, then this could be the first good Terminator game in more than a decade.
Click to expand...

Hopefully it will be better than the last few efforts. Being a fan I'll probably get this to tide me over for a week until the film is out...
 
Seen some footage on Youtube of the final game. It isn't spectacular, but it looks fun all the same. One of the major drawbacks is that it's pretty much a 4/5hour game tops. Rental written all over it.
 
12 trophies, all gold and they're something like finish level 1 on easy, level 2 easy etc... then finish the game on easy, medium, hard which are all gold and then you get your platinum.
 
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