I played Terminator: Resistance as a slut.
This was not
something I expected to be able to do in a Terminator game, and yet here
we are in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, struggling to survive the war
against the machines, with a right thirst on.
There
are dialogue choices to make in this first-person shooter from the
people behind the terrible Rambo game of 2014. At one point I was
presented with the opportunity to have sex with the woman who leads the
resistance faction you're fighting for. She wanted me to kill someone
for her. I wasn't so sure I fancied doing that, in part because I
dreaded the prospect of playing yet another mind-numbing away mission.
But, she said she would make it worth my while. Then, a dialogue choice
presented itself: press heart to bang (I'm paraphrasing), or walk away?
Press heart to bang!
So she led me away, by the hand, to a room
down the bottom of the bunker, where there was a bed. A nice bed for
post-apocalyptic Los Angeles! And then, in first-person, we did it, her
last-gen face all up in my grill, groaning and writhing. A minute later
we finished. "You're dismissed," she said, pushing me out the door. I
tried to get back in, but the door was locked. What, no time for a quick
spoon?
I felt kind of bad about sleeping with the boss because all
throughout the game's terrible campaign I'd had my eye on Jennifer, my
one true love, a woman who found it in her heart to flirt with me
minutes after she had a terrifying encounter with a metal head. Jennifer
is the woman I was supposed to fall in love with. Had I cheated on her?
Maybe.
And then, towards the end of the game, just before the big
battle with Skynet, I tracked Jennifer down to a particularly beautiful
moonlit bit of rubble. There we talked, electricity in the air (or was
that a Terminator going back in time?). But I felt guilty. Just a few
hours ago I'd slept with the boss. I should tell Jennifer. I should hold
my hands up. But the game would not give me the option to confess.
Then, a dialogue choice presented itself: press heart to bang (I'm
paraphrasing again), or walk away? Press heart to bang!
Another
first-person sex scene with video game graphics that wouldn't look out
of place on the early days of the Xbox 360. Jennifer groaned and
writhed. She took her beanie off for the occasion, which was a nice
touch. Her Oblivion face and mouth moved about as if being tugged by an
off camera puppeteer, and all I could think of was, is this what Kryten
would look like if he was doing it? And had hair?
"I think I'll
stay here for a while," she said after we'd finished. And there she lay,
on her side, on the floor, rubble all around us, the moonlight spread
across the concrete. She is fixed in place, like a statue. I tried
jumping on her. The game wouldn't let me shoot her. Nor could I blow her
up with one of my grenades. Jennifer is unmoved. What, no time for a
quick spoon? Jennifer appreciated that.These
two encounters are the only memorable bits of Terminator: Resistance -
and that's because they're inexplicably cringe. The rest of the game,
which leads directly into the beginning of the first Terminator movie,
is so generic that it has dissolved in my memory like a Skip on my
tongue. This game, clearly hamstrung by a budget the makers of Call of
Duty would spend on a single explosion, reminds me of the mediocre
shooters of the last generation of consoles, the Legendary: The Boxes
and Turning Point: Fall of Libertys of this world. Movement is a turgid
chore. The sprint feels like it's on a second delay, and there's no
mantling. Shooting feels like pissing in the wind. The visuals are so
dated they may in fact have come from 29th August 1997. And the
Terminators... oh god, what have you done to the Terminators? These
killing machines should be a terrifying AI. One alone should be enough
to send a pack of resistance fighting running for their lives. The
Terminators in this game walk slowly forward, shooting in your
direction, and then fall down when you've painted them in enough red and
purple plasma. These things are the brainchild of Skynet, an A.I. so
advanced it came to the conclusion that it should nuke its creators into
oblivion. They're supposed to be super smart, and yet on the
battlefield they cannot flank. Terminator:
Resistance runs smoothly for the most part, and the only bug I
encountered saw a T-800 I'd set on fire locked in place as it strangled
me. I had to restart the game.There's so much
about Terminator: Resistance that is so weird, too. I mean apart from
the sex scenes. The skill tree system is as generic as I've seen in a
video game for a long time, and I ended up unlocking all but a few of
the skills by the time I finished the campaign, so what's the point of
it? The lockpicking minigame is a direct rip of the lockpicking minigame
from Bethesda's Fallout games. I mean, it's exactly the same. It even
lets you force the lock, with a percentage chance of success tied to
your lockpicking skill level. The hacking mini-game is Frogger. Frogger!
And there's a character called Colin (don't worry, he's a dick). Where have we seen this before?I
see what the developers were shooting for: large, semi-open world
levels in which packs of Terminators patrol and tension and anxiety are
around every corner. But the enemies carry so little threat you end up
charging about shooting anything and everything that looks metal just to
speed up proceedings. Quests involve you going out into yet another
grey, ruinous environment to get something or take a picture of
something else and that's about it. Side quests are clearly marked on
your map. Exploration feels pointless because you learn early on that
there's nothing interesting to discover. There's a tonne of crap to pick
up, and at first you think, oh, perhaps there's a scavenging / survival
mechanic here, but none of it matters in the end. The game wants you to
consider playing stealthily, but this just prolongs the pain. Better to
kill all the Terminators and their robot buddies and be done with it.
When you do engage, there's little more to do than point and shoot. The
boss fights, which are very video game boss fights, are
uninspired. Only one mission is set in an environment that does not look
like the future bits in the first two Terminator films. There's some
green! Shame about the gameplay, though. Terminator's
environments lean heavily on the post-apocalyptic LA seen in the first
two Terminator movies, but the setting becomes bland spread across an
entire video game.It is a surprise, I suppose,
to find this Terminator game tries to set itself up as some sort of
Fallout-style shooter with an emotional, character-driven story. There's
a hub with NPCs to talk to, and when you return from missions the NPCs
sometimes have something new to tell you about themselves. There are
dialogue choices, backstories and side quests to pick up. Say the right
thing and a character will appreciate it. You'll get different cutscenes
and endings depending on your decisions. But it's all so generic that
it's hard to care. The voice actors are doing their best but the
dialogue they're working with is wooden. You play a soldier so by the
numbers that even now, after playing as him for 10 hours, I cannot for
the life of me remember his name. Right at the start we're told our decisions matter, but the story is so naff it's hard to care.I
am hunting for positives and I guess there's decent fan service for
Terminator fans. You get an Uzi 9mm. At one point you get to name a
kid's dog and can pick from Max or Wolfie. You go to the hospital Sarah
Connor was holed up in during the events of Terminator 2 and find a note
from Dr. Silberman. One of the people the Terminators have killed
during their experiments is clearly the person the T-1000 was modelled
on. You even do a riff on the John Connor resistance shelter hero walk
from the opening scene of Terminator 2.
And, I suppose, it's cool
to see a game deal with the events that led up to John Connor sending
Kyle Reese back in time to protect Sarah Connor from Arnie. But these
snippets of fan service cannot save Terminator: Resistance from its dark
fate. The 10 at most hours it'll last you are best avoided. As I
finished the campaign I thought to myself, am I nostalgic for a really
shonky double-A first-person shooter from the Xbox 360 era? And then I
came to my senses and realised the answer is no. No I am not. Not when
it costs fifty quid. Terminator: Resistance is at its best when it forces you to worry about the T-800s.It's
a shame, too, because even as the Terminator franchise slips further
into irrelevance with the release of each new movie, this universe
remains perfect for video games. I'd love to see a developer do to
Terminator what Creative Assembly did to Alien and create a survival
horror experience where you desperately try to fend off a single
Terminator as it hunts you down. Or maybe even something along the lines
of the Resident Evil 2 remake, but instead of Mr. X stalking you, it's
Arnie. It feels like the developers of Terminator: Resistance had this
thought, too, but couldn't see it through. At the beginning of the game,
when you've only got non-plasma weapons at your disposal, the T-800s
carry a real threat and you're forced to play stealthily. The best level
in the game, set inside a hospital in which Terminators perform
horrific experiments on humans, is a stealth mission that approaches
nerve-wracking. But as you progress through the campaign, level up your
character and upgrade your plasma weapons, you overpower the enemies and
it's downhill from there.
Ah well. A pipe dream, perhaps, unlike the nightmare that is Terminator: Resistance.
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