Terminator Salvation the Videogame is an interesting effort coming from Grin and the newly formed Halcyon Games. While it kept its promises and was out the same date as the movie, the game doesn't deliver much for the common gamer, but I guess it helps set up the mood and offer a bit of interactivity for Terminator fans.

Indeed, if you happen to know a thing or two about the blockbuster franchise but you haven't seen the latest movie installment yet, fear not. Terminator Salvation the Videogame won't spoil much. In its roughly four to five hours of gameplay, you will get to experience one of the missions that helped define John Connor as a person, and as leader of the human Resistance.

Although the game was designed and intended to have a strong multiplayer component, due to time concerns this was dropped in the final version. There is instead, however, a local co-op option, and I can only imagine that bringing your friends to the party and trying to defeat Skynet's armies this way is a lot more fun.

However, because the AI controlled humans in your team are not extremely brilliant and, may I add, highly scripted, a singleplayer mode that takes you five hours to finish properly might take half of that with a real human helping you outflank enemies. So I guess the proper way to play this is to try... umm... let's say the medium difficulty and finish the game singleplayer, and then try the hard mode with a friend.

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Speaking of difficulty, even the fiercest terminators have become extremely frail these days, and several grenades taken to the chest (front) will easily destroy them. A couple of grenades are enough for most of the other enemies. The only artificial stuff that raises difficulty here is that they starve you of ammunition, especially of high explosive rockets and grenades, but give you enough "weak" ammo to have you fire a lot of bullets into a metal demon.

I ended up with mixed feelings about this game, because despite its lacking in a lot of areas, probably just to catch up with the early release date, it still gives you a nice few hours of action driven gameplay and it can be fun in Co-op mode. I'm also not mentioning the fans, which are dying to get their hands on anything Terminator.

Everything takes place in the future, but several years before the action in Terminator Salvation, the movie. This is of course, before John Connor will be the leader of the resistance, and by the looks of it, one of the decisive, turning points of why he became that.

A distress radio signal, coming from a camp nearby starts the plot of this game. With the region crawling with "metal", the superior Resistance officer decides to evacuate the area. But at the last moment, John decides he should go alone and try to rescue those people. After all, this is what makes us human and this is why we are different from those machines. Blair Williams, a female resistance fighter and a friend jumps out of the helicopter just when it's about to take off and accompanies you as you venture to the wastelands and fight Skynet robots to finally save those survivors, but most importantly, to raise the spirit of humans worldwide through your inspiring actions this way.

During this four or so hour extravaganza, you will get to shoot Terminators, flying and ground drones, mounted turrets and shoot killer robot bikes while on the move, and even drive one of those giant mechs, sabotaged and changed so that it would work for the Resistance. Probably all in the first five minutes... and then the same thing until the end.

You can't say graphics are bad, but there's really nothing that stands out, and you will get the same destroyed buildings and thrashed surroundings all the way. But what's really a big turn off in this game is the level design. In each mission you follow a specified path, and you can't stray from it. As in, the game limits you to walking that path and there are "invisible", impassable walls around it.

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So this way you get to one big "room" after another, face some robots usually starting with small drones and ending up with the harder to kill T series terminators. Then, your team members talk some more, and then everything repeats itself in the next area.

There are some interesting things to see however, like the introduction of the first rubber faces infiltrating Terminators, Skynet experiments that lead to the real flesh Terminators further along the history line. And of course, how the apocalyptic future looks and feels...

Enemy AI is really weak, and even though robots are highly scripted and rooms are fairly large, I caught some stuck in the wall. Nasty part is that you have to look for them and kill them, because the game won't progress to the next zone if you don't finish off all of your enemies.

Speaking of AI, the same thing applies for your allied team members, but the only thing that they will change without (much) scripting is their cover position from time to time, during a fight. Still, because you rely heavily on position to fire in the back of Terminators where they are vulnerable, your squad members will give you a hard time a lot of the fights. Either you lay cover fire from the opposite direction and draw enemy attention, but they fail to shoot it in the back; or they just keep trying to shoot it preventing them to be drawn to your fire instead.

Either way, you'll be far better off playing Co-op with a real human, and the experience will be far more enjoyable.

Though it is unfortunate that Christian Bale didn't play John in the game, actresses Rose McGowan, Moon Bloodgood and others will entertain you with their voices during gameplay. Same goes for the music: while based on the now famous T2 soundtrack, with familiar rings to it, it is still a highly remixed version, and still nothing remarkable really.

What's more there to say? Maybe to talk a bit about the cover system - on which the game relies heavily. Similar to Gears of War, you must use cover in the game in order to be victorious. Every conflict spot is designed in a way so you can circle around your enemies and take them out from behind, while your AI partners draw attention upon them. So don't bother fighting off robots from an impossible angle and throw everything at them, there's always another way.

Enemies come in waves, and your health is restored between them, but never during fights. So try to keep that in mind as well.

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Conclusion

A rather short, sometimes buggy and repetitive gameplay, but with the occasional high action moment and a nice, more interactive experience for Terminator fans, Terminator Salvation the Videogame is just ok. Probably the best part is that it came out on the same date as the movie, but just look at what sacrifices the developers had to make to get this done...

Gameplay: 66

It is not boring because you get to play it only for four hours or so, but I fear if it was extended in any way, this could have been a lot worse. An interesting episode in Connor's life, without revealing too much about the movie plot. Luckily the reviewed version was not the PC one, because there were a lot of installation problems at launch, and this mark would have probably been a lot lower.

Graphics: 69

It feels to me they are using a proprietary engine, but I could be wrong. I haven't seen any additional info on that. Textures and environments can be bland and will repeat over and over, but there's a nice feel to it. The "wasteland" is decently re-created.

Multiplayer: 72

Co-op could be this game's only "salvation", and I'm sure that given more time, this could have had a proper online mode. I guess we'll never know.

Sound: 68