The Short Version: Not only is Terminator Salvation below average in every conceivable way, but the experience itself is extremely short (3-4 hours long) and offers no online multiplayer modes. How anyone decided it should be sold at full price ($59.99) baffles me and frankly is an insult to gamers.

You guys remember when I said back in the Terminator: Salvation Game Preview Video that playing movie-tie in games is like being burned alive in a nuclear explosion?

Well i’m actually surprised at how correctly I predicted what it would be like to play this game, its exactly like that. Jacob and I had to FORCE ourselves finish this one in its entirety so you guys would never have to. You can thank us later. So what did we think?

Unfortunately fans, The Game is Ass. What makes it so bad? Well the Reasons are as follows:

What I Hated:
It’s Criminally Short
It will take you 3 maybe 4 hours to complete the game. And there is NO, I repeat NO multiplayer. 4 hours max and your are done. If that sounds like your kind of game then by all means buy it, but I expect more from a title that was originally sold at $60. Shame on GRIN, Microsoft, or whichever CEO decided on that price point. Its clear they were trying to take advantage of the movie release as most of these tie in games try do to.

No Diversity in Enemies
Wasps, Spiders, Wasps, Spiders, Wasps, Spiders, Spiders, Spiders, Wasps, T-600, Spiders, oh also Wasps. The majority of the time you the same 3 or 4 enemies, not even the cool ones. Some might say well hey joe its terminator there wasn’t ORIGINALLY much variation in the enemies. That may be true but you’d be wrong – a true game designer could easily come up with solutions to this problem. For example just one idea – they could have had variation on the skin jobs for the terminators that had rubber skin- and allow pieces of this skin to blow off as you shoot at it.

Awful Voice Acting
A Short game, with no variation in the enemies? Its possible that we can forgive these if the production quality and story blow us away.
They did.
I’m blown away at how little effort was put into the voice acting, the dialogue itself is BAD and the actors probably know it – so they deliver their lines with ZERO emotion. Its no wonder Christian Bale refused to lend his voice and likeness for the game.

The money that went to pay Common, Moon Bloodgood (still a bad ass name) and Rose McGowan to voice the characters would have better been spent on the game’s Graphics.

Graphics/Cut Scenes/Story are Terrible
The graphics look like something on the PS2. Furthermore the Cut Scenes use the in-game character models. Huge mistake.
At least other failed terminator games had excellent CGI cutscenes to reward you as you play through the crappy missions. Other than the intro cut scene (well-done) You get nothing more.

Instead the “story” moves forward in these really bad puppet shows where they try to force their in-game character models to “interact” with each other realistically. It fails. And it ends up feeling like a really bad machinima.

No Multiplayer
So you blow through the game that has no collectibles, no reason to explore, no means to explore, and is finished in 4 hours tops. At least theres mulitplayer to save the title right? Wrong. No Mulitplayer. Nothing. Nada.

Bad AI
The greatest sin I think this game commits is not the lackluster graphics, its not the uninteresting story, its not the boring missions, but rather the unforgivably retarded AI.

Your teammates are useless and enemies stand in place allowing you to flank them easily, never changing tactics the whole game.

What I Liked:
Local Couch Co-op
The game has a split-screen 2 player co-op mode through the entire single player campaign. Player one takes John Conner, Player Two gets Blair Williams. As I said before your AI teammates are worthless so at least here your buddy can correctly flank the enemies and actually take part in the battle.

In one level you play as an HK Tank
This was the only fun level we played. In one of the cut-scenes John says hes going into sky net territory to rescue some soldiers – someone tells him hes crazy – he replies with something like “I’ve got a plan”. The next moment we see him roll out on a mechanics chair from him underneath a f*cking HK Tank apparently having just reprogrammed it! WHAT??!! When the Hell did that Happen?!? Where the HELL did he Find it, since I havent seen one in the game up until now? How the frak did he get close enough to even turn it off? Wait, turn it off? HUH?
I think the developers at this point said “F*ck it”, we don’t care anymore, just let them play in an HK tank. Well it was fun for 15 minutes, mainly because we were so powerful the level was easy as hell and it was the only one we didnt have to restart on the hard setting.

Final Verdict
This game makes me ANGRY, I’m stuck playing this while you smart people out there are playing Prototype, Red Faction, and Ghostbusters. I HATE ALL OF YOU.
The game was a chore, and absolute chore to play through, it should never be that way. Never. Everything is below average or worse here and the game itself is a disservice to the franchise.

2/10

DESTROY IT!