Hey folks, Valkor. Introducing to the TOV team, our newest Gaming Editor, Ghosthead. His name will become obvious in a couple of weeks as you'll see he has an affinity for ghost... or busting ghosts for that matter. heh heh heh. Anyway I'm glad to have him on the team, so look for more reviews from him on some of the hottest, lastest and greatest gaming out there - Valkor out!
For years movie based games have had the reputation for being nothing more than a disappointment for gamers of all types. However, as Activision’s X-men Origins: Wolverine game for the xbox 360 and Playstation 3 proved a movie based game has the potential to actually be good, if not better, than it’s movie counterpart. Did Terminator: Salvation continue this momentum? Unfortunately not.
Boasting only 11 achievements and trophies the game is nothing more than over 5 hours of run, hide, and shoot game play. To start the game really doesn’t follow the plotline of the movie at all, if anything it acts a prequel to the events of the movie and that being the case why name it after the movie? Why not give the game its’ own title? Another great aspect of games today is online play and the lack of it in this game is another disappointment. There's a co-op mode however it is playing through the bland story with nothing extra added, I mean who wouldn’t want to go online with their buddies and thrash terminators or be the terminators themselves? But why would the company do that? After all that would make it a good game at least.
Next the overall look and design of the game is deplorable at best. Pixilated backgrounds, surfaces with little to no detail and a terrible physics engine, if there was any, completely kills the experience of the game. Gamers get the feeling that they are playing a Playstation 2 game. The voice acting and overall dialogue are terrible, very bland with no emotion and corny. Why Christian Bale would decide to give his likeness and voice to a Batman Begins game and not Terminator I’ll never know.
Finally, game play was said to have completely destructible environments and would have a gears of war feel; if I were the Epic Games C.E.O I would be insulted because yes even though the cover scheme is similar the destructibility only goes as far as the cement cover being chipped every once in a while and exploding the occasional car. However, there is a little bit of light at the end of this tunnel because the run, hide and shoot gameplay does entertain to a point, yet after running through 9 chapters of facing the same enemy types with little to no variation the game does deliver one final disappointment.
In conclusion, if you're a gamer who's looking for a game to keep you occupied for the weekend and want easy achievements and trophies then I’d say go to blockbuster and bring this game back as soon as possible; Otherwise save your money and instead just go see the movie. Overall I’d give this game 1 star out of 5.
