As Human Resistance leader John Connor might summarize TERMINATOR:SALVATION The Game: movie tie-in mission accomplished, but final victory was not achieved. TERMINATOR:2018's resident gaming expert, Brice, test drove the T:S game on XBox 360 with me riding shotgun, and he felt both encouraged and disappointed by aspects of play — or as he put it: The game was short. Very short. It felt like a level in a bigger, better game than an entire game itself.

With director McG's epic feature film TERMINATOR:SALVATION blasting away audiences in theaters, the buzz surrounding the revitalization of the franchise sadly does not translate to the video game tie-in and the results can't avoid disappointing by comparison. Set in 2016, two years before the new film, the game's story spine and scope of action seem as hampered by the movie as they are inspired by it. As a tie-in product, the game feels prohibited from competing with the film's wider and worldlier events, and the lack of creative freedom (or budget investment) certainly prevents the game from living up to its potential as a solid representative of the franchise on gaming platforms.

Featuring John Connor (but not Christian Bale as voice talent), the game unveils an earlier, rather inconsequential mission to save human captives and destroy a Skynet jamming tower and factory complex — in effect, a very watered down version of the feature film's plot, but with only a fraction of its drama, danger and mythology implications. Connor's warrior ethos to save his comrades in the face of mortal combat with Terminator foes doesn't advance the character much, rather it propels you through increasingly repetitive gameplay. Therein lies the greatest fault of TERMINATOR:SALVATION The Game: a mere three variations on Terminator opponents quickly disarms the challenge of playing, aside from throwing more of the same at you as levels progress in quantity of battle instead of quality. Game graphics vary from impressive to average, with the opening cinematic looking far more impressive than the game which follows in both style (of course) and substance (unfortunately). Quoth our T:2018 expert: The character play was smooth, but the cinematics were cheesy. The characters looked like re-animated corpses that died from an overdose of botox. I would expect that sort of thing in an older console game, but not in a next-gen platform. The first clip that plays before the game starts was beautifully done (which happened to be the trailer as well), but that was it. For the rest of the game you were forced to watch in-game style graphics of blocky Japanese film lip-synced puppets. During level loads, you get a nice interactive close-up of a T-600 endoskull, red eye sensors glowing with menace as you rotate around for limited 3D views — and you'd better like this novelty because you'll see it over and over again.  Our gamemaster said: The interactive close-up of a terminator skull while the game loaded the next scene was beautiful . . . although it occurred way too often.  Repeated game loads between level progressions tend to interrupt the play flow of the action, and the endoskull close-up quickly becomes a non-sequitor between scenes, not relating to advancement at all.

The character models are far less detailed with average to poor facial expressions and design: the texture mapping unintentionally mimics the T-600 concept of wearing pull-over rubber faces at times, which works against the franchise mythology.   As Brice noted, I like that the other characters in the game actually do damage to the enemy.  It gives the user the feel of teamwork even when not in co-op mode.  In some cases if you came late to the party (say you were hunting for ammo or weapons) you could miss all the excitement.  

Other issues hinder players' natural instinct to want to explore and use the attractively designed and conceived environments, from skyscraper ruins to rubble walls and ruined vehicles: Finding high ground, flanking and/or drawing fire so that bad guys could be destroyed was a nice touch, but I missed being able to jump or crouch.  All I could do was run and take cover.  I felt like most of the game was spent hiding, although Conner sliding from cover to cover was a cool maneuver. I would have loved to have been able to explore and interact with the world more.  Kudos for the game's alluring post-nuke wasteland, a worthy carry-over from the feature film's terrific production design, but it's a drag that movement limits prevent players from using these environments to their full tactical and art-appreciation advantage.

Connor (a fair simulation by Gideon Emery) is joined on his rescue mission by Blair Williams, Barnes and new recruit Angie Salter (voiced by film actors Moon Bloodgood and Common with a game-only performance by Rose McGowan respectively), and their interplay lends a squad mentality to play despite single-shooter mode.  The game offers some AI-player cooperation as several levels require flanking maneuvers around Terminator T-70 'Spiders' to shoot out their rear batter packs — a handy way to bring down these lethal crawlers if you're short on grenades or rockets.  Though you'll find as levels of difficulty increase, assists from your AI squad decrease as your generic comrades often fall to brutal T-600 assaults while you run around to flank or gather weapons.  Two-player mode is available in a split-screen format which isn't ideal but workable, though it cannot make up for the lack of online group play in such a recent release to the XBox Live generation — this was a giant corner for Evolved Games and Halcyon to cut when producing their movie tie-in game, and its value for hardcore gamers drops accordingly.

In summary, TERMINATOR:SALVATION The Game holds a lot of conceptual potential but the short play time and lack of multi-player mode keep the results from rising to meet such promise.  It's a solid and likely enjoyable play for TERMINATOR franchise fans and it certainly offers a platform shooter amid John Connor's post-Judgment Day world of 2016.  Easy level play will be exhausted in about 5 hours of average skill attention, while advanced levels may take longer because Skynet simply throws more of the same at you, so the game experience fails to build to entice next level mastery.  Good enough but barely, and certainly gaming and TERMINATOR fans wanted and hoped for more.