Terminator Salvation (PS3)
Review by Rich Mannox
On receiving this game I was excited. Memories of the original Terminator film came flooding back, the man vs machine battles, Arnie in the gun shop asking to look at the uzi and the bit where he pulls his eye out.
On firing up the game it looked good the classic terminator theme music was there along with a nice action packed into sequence.
The plot behind the game is similar to the movie of the same name which has just come out. The machines have won the war and LA is a ruined wasteland. You play John Connor a soldier in the resistance force against the machines. Connor finds out that some of his mates have been captured by the machines and sets out to get them back from behind enemy lines.
There you go that's your plot, which gives you your reason to run around shooting at things which is basically all you do during the game.
Yes I know it's a shoot-em-up but it would be nice every so often to find out a bit more about Connor, the characters around you and the world that they live in. The action part of the game involves you and some other mates running through what's left of LA, shooting the evil machines on sight. When you do this the game the combat takes place in an open area with various burnt out cars and half demolished walls to hide behind.
Your enemy often ends up in the middle of this area leaving you and yours to attack from all angles so that while you are taking fire your mates will be shooting the baddie from behind or the side, then when it goes to return fire you do the same thing from your vantage point.
This results in a more tactical take down of your enemy and relies on good AI of your team mates, who will be a bit thick sometimes and hide even though they have an open target.
The AI of the terminators is good however and it soon sees what you are up to and adapts its methods, fortunately it is half dead at this point tho. Most of the shoot outs in the game tend to occur in this manner which results in a bit of a stop start game where you have to engage one target for some time before defeating it, rather that the run and gun style of other shoot-em-ups such as call of duty 4.
This style lends itself to on-line play, but obviously someone out there has no imagination and split screen is the only option, which is great but misses the point completely when there is a whole world out there to play with.
The game itself while good does not bring anything new or exciting to the party, its like they made a film and thought they better do a game also go make a few quid of it. Its nothing special, and most gamers will already have a couple of far superior shot-em-ups in their collection to which this game will add nothing.
To summarise yes its good but we have seen it (and better) all before. If it wasn't for the movie the game wouldn't exist and I don't think anyone would notice the loss.
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Authors
Steve Wollaston - Sunday Mercury games reviewer Steve has been writing about video games for donkey's years. In fact he is probably far too old for it now which is why you will see a lot of reviews been done by kids... He has been nominated three times for Regional Games Journalist Of The Year at the Games Media Awards, but never wins. His major love is sports games and rates Sensible World of Soccer circa 90's as the greatest game ever made - closely followed by Championship Manager 2. Skyrim has currently taken over his life.
