Terminator Resistance Review

Terminator: Resistance is the new game from publisher Reef Entertainment. Their last game to come out was ‘Rambo the video game’. Resistance serves as there new break out game, so let’s see how it did.

Terminator: Resistance serves as a prequel to the first Terminator film. In Resistance, you play as a resistance soldier Jacob Rivers in the year 2029. 30 years after judgement day. Your resistance branch has been wiped out by the annihilation line of Skynet. Just when death seems imminent a strange voice over the radio guides you to safety. Shortly after, you meet up with a group of scavengers who take you in. After joining one of them on a scavenger hunt for supplies you run into a Skynet infiltrator unit, narrowly escaping death once more with the help of the stranger from the radio. You then learn that Skynet has marked you for termination and that you are number 3 on the list. The same list as John Connor.

Now that’s all I’m going to say about the story as I really don’t want to spoil anything. What I do want to talk about though is how this game made me change my mind from thinking it was a bland movie tie in, to the terminator game we finally deserve.

The last terminator game I had played before this was Terminator: Salvation and while I thought the movie was good (and highly underrated), the game, however, was not. It fell into that cheap “let’s bang out a movie game tie in to make some money” category. The gameplay was very, very bland. The story was forgettable. The only thing going for that game was that it was an easy 1000 Gamerscore on the Xbox 360, which should not be the best thing about a game.

So when Terminator: Resistance was announced I was sceptical. The main reason for this scepticism was due to the game coming out of nowhere and the lack of marketing it put out.

Yet I remained hopeful. After the diverse reviews of the new film ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’ I hoped that this game would balance out the Terminator franchise for the year. After all, as a terminator fan, it’s not been plain sailing. The last good Terminator film was T2: Judgement day (with the exception of Terminator: Salvation) and since then the franchise has been rebooted and retconned twice.

Anyway.

When I started up the game I was met with my first impression hurdle. That being the graphics. I’m not saying they’re bad. They’re actually quite good for the setting and theme of the game. Yet compare them to any other game released this year and they feel a bit outdated. Character models have a weird shine to them, certain lighting looks a bit off. Yet I pushed forward to my next hurdle.

The sound design.

Again there’s nothing overly bad to say here. The music fits the game perfectly. Very reminiscing to Brad Fiedel’s original soundtrack for ‘The Terminator’. The ambience, gun sounds, machine sounds and terminator sounds all feel authentic to the original film and to a post-apocalyptic setting.

The only issue I had was to do with the voice acting. When I say this I don’t mean the voice actors themselves. No. They did a perfect job. Yes, there were some cheesy lines of dialogue, but it fit the 80’s feel of the game. The issue I had was when the dialogue came in, I could hear the cut points. There was a pop any time dialogue came in, which to me indicates the dialogue cut point. Also sometimes the dialogue noise levels were often too loud and the sound levels peaked too high. Again I’ve not got an overall issue with this, yet this feels like a mistake waiting to be fixed. A mistake which should have been fixed before shipping the game out.

The last hurdle before the homestretch was the gameplay. Sometimes clunky, sometimes smooth. The gameplay played out very similar to a fallout game. Dialogue had optional lines of speech to choose from. There’s a levelling system for your character. Crafting and lock picking where similar to that of a fallout game.

Yet the game itself felt it’s own.

Shooting and fighting in the game were unique. There are a wide array of guns to choose from. Traditional bullet loaded guns are only of any use during the first levels of the game. Then you have upgradable plasma guns later on. Once you have a plasma rifle or plasma powered gun, then the game feels it’s opened up.  Terminators, for example, can’t be damaged by bullets. There is a great (Yet frustrating level) where you have to rescue resistance fighters from a Skynet occupied hospital. Because the guns you have are ineffective, you have to sneak past the T-800’s without getting caught. You look back at this later on once you have your plasma rifle, now grateful for owning one.

The only issue I had with the shooting in the game was that there is no controller vibration. It feels wrong for the first hours of gameplay. You do get used to it over time, they have hit markers to register your kills, but it’s a standard mechanic I’d expect this game to have.

One final issue I had in this hurdle is one that most games can’t tackle very well. Video game sex scenes. There are two in this game. They are optional. It just didn’t sit well with the rest of the game. It felt awkward and unneeded.

For me, this games home run that surpassed all these hurdles was its story. I went from not wanting to play the game at one point, to push through, to then not wanting to put my controller down. The story carries the game.  It is a slow burner, the story gradually reveals its plot over the course of the game with a final twist in the closing act.

Overall I do have issues with this game yes, yet despite that, I still found myself playing right to the end. Terminator: Resistance finally feels like the perfect addition to the Terminator franchise that we’ve been waiting for. It also serves as a nice prequel to the first film. For that Terminator Resistance gets an 8 out of 10.

Developer: Teyon
Genre: First-person shooter
Publisher: Reef Entertainment
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows

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