Terminator Salvation (Xbox 360) Review

Terminator Salvation was one of my top 10 most anticipated games of this year, but after playing it, the game will probably end up on my worst games of 2009 list. The idea of the game is one that I thought would be great for a few years now, Gears of War gameplay and cover system meets the Terminator universe. The game does try to copy the Gears of War cover system, but they failed big time. The thing that bothered me most was if I was behind say a small barrier wall, I could not jump over it to get to the next piece of cover. I would have to get out of cover, expose myself to enemy fire and run around to get to the next safe point. If maybe the developers spent just a few more months on the game they would have gotten it right.  The controls are pretty standard and don’t take too long to get used to so that is a plus.

The games A.I can either be really smart or really dumb. At all times you have a partner (Blair) who you need at all times to help you fight certain types of machines, one person needs to get their attention while the other sneaks behind them and shoot them in the back because that is their only weakness. Sometimes you partner will know exactly where to go to lure the enemies fire and sometimes she will even take out the enemy herself, but then there are the times that your partner is so stupid she gets hung up behind a wall while you have moved on 2 full screens. The enemy A.I is pretty smart, the machines that require you to kill from behind that I just talked about are very cautious and keep an eye on both you and your partner and at times takes a few minutes to line up to get a good shot. However the T-600 Endoskeleton Terminators come right at you with their chain guns blazing. They have no fear and they are really tough to kill. There are only about 4 different types of enemies in the game so it can get really boring fighting the same things over and over again.

Now the main problems with the game, first off there is no online co-op. There is local co-op so if you have a friend over the two of you can play via split screen, but this game could really have been good if it had online co-op. Second, the story is just boring and gives no life to the Terminator universe. The story is set in 2016, two years before the events of the movie Terminator Salvation. You play as John Connor, you are not the leader of the resistance that you will one day become yet, instead you are just a solider under someone else’s command. On a mission you receive a distress call from survivors that are in your location, your commander says that they are going to leave them and not risk the lives of his platoon, Connor decides to disobey his commander and go out on his own to rescue the survivors. That’s it, nothing exciting or anything. Third thing I could not stand about this game was the long loading times. After every level and during every cut scene you are faced with loading times of about 45 seconds to up to a minute. Even if you install the game on your hard drive it doest even help.

Finally the worst thing about this game is its length. I completed this game from beginning to end in four hours, that’s right 4 freaking hours. I paid $60 for a game that took me 4 hours to complete. The game has no replay value, nothing to go back and collect or find. Nothing. I always hear complaints of people getting mad for spending $60 on a game and they finish it in 8-12 hours, but for a game to be only 4 hours in this current generation of game systems is just unacceptable in my book.

So there you have it, a game that when first shown last year which looked like a Gears of War meets Terminator game that I thought would kick total ass turned out to be a total let down. I do not recommend anyone buy this game, instead go rent it, or wait till you can find it for less than $10 cause as short of a game as it is, it is not worth the full retail price of $60