The Terminator is one of the most iconic sagas in the history of science fiction cinema, thanks to a plot that has been able to blend together the theme of rebel machines with that of time travel. Unfortunately, video games have never managed to give fans titles capable of evoking the same atmosphere, getting lost in the same dark meanders in which so many other tie-ins have ended up.
Teyon tries with his Terminator: Resistance to lend a hand to previous video games, in an attempt to save them from termination. How did it turn out? Find out by reading our review.
Terminator: Resistance | Resistance and relationships
Teyon's video game takes place thirty years after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. We are Jacob Rivers, we are recruited by the Resistance, an armed group of human survivors that aims to stop the rebel machines unleashed against humanity by Skynet, the now infamous supercomputer network that started the whole thing.
The earth is invaded by Terminators, robots hunting the last bastions of humanity. One of these is Jacob, who ended up on the list of people to "finish" because they are considered a threat to Skynet's plan. During the adventure, we will make the acquaintance of a mysterious character, the Stranger, a hooded man who seems to know much more than we do about the ongoing war and the future of humanity.
From here on, the plot unfolds by leveraging the themes of the film series, complete with twists related to possible futures and attempts to change events through time travel. Overall, the story of Terminator: Resistance lets itself be followed quite well, although it never really shows the muscles, however it should be emphasized that this product does not leave much room for our will, in fact the story follows very clear predefined tracks which do not allow the player to intervene in a really decisive way.
There are, indeed, opportunities to slightly modify the course of events, but these will mainly concern the relationships between the protagonist and the other characters. The most interesting part of the story, in fact, is precisely the possibility of interacting with other survivors and members of the Resistance by varying the opinion they have of us and to unlock extra scenes as well.
There is not the same depth that we could find in RPGs, but in general it is a system that makes the stages of preparation for battles more interesting. In Terminator: Resistance there are not only main missions, but also secondary ones, with which we can deepen the relationship with a character or increase his degree of confidence. Most of the time it involves looking for a particular object and returning it to its owner, looking for supplies and medicines, and looking for information about people who have been lost.
Stealth or plasma rifle?
The gameplay of Terminator: Resistance isn't particularly difficult to describe: go from point A to point B making your way through the robots. We have simplified it a bit, but we are not very far from reality, in fact, Teyon's video game offers missions that are not very varied and with zero strokes of genius. Most of the time we will be called to go to a place manned by the Terminators to activate something, take an important object for the success of the human rebellion or look for useful information to destroy Skynet from within and then retrace our steps and be literally teleported into the nearest refuge.
The mission map seems to be very extensive, in reality it only takes a few meters to realize that often the path is forced by invisible walls and heaps of rubble that represent an insurmountable obstacle. To get through unscathed, we can decide to take up arms or sneak behind enemy lines. Here we must open a nice parenthesis: the game advises not to engage the enemy, since conventional weapons do not do any damage to the Terminators, but soon we will come into possession of the plasma rifle which, on the other hand, makes them vulnerable… too much.
In the early stages, stealth is necessary and we must point out that the character, when crouched, moves with an exhausting slowness. When you unlock the plasma rifle, a completely different game begins because, although it is always recommended to go unnoticed, this makes life much easier for us. Using plasma weapons is more fun and above all easier, because the AI of the enemies is not particularly advanced: they will just come towards us without any kind of guerrilla animation or, at the limit, from a simple fist fight, becoming metal mush in a few seconds.
From a certain point on, we will completely abandon conventional weapons and stealth to make our way by force, the problem is that the shooting phases themselves are not particularly exciting recreating very little of the firefights seen in the films. We would have preferred more cinematic and post-apocalyptic sci-fi scenes, yet we were disappointed.
Hacking and locks to open
The gameplay is enriched by some not very detailed mechanics but which at least manage to vary the game structure. Let's start by saying that the character can level and get skill points, these go to increase his skills in certain talents, including hacking, burglary, or skill with weapons, strength and the capacity of the backpack.
Not all locks and devices will be of the same level, therefore we will have to bring the skill we need to the appropriate level. The burglary it is taken even-even by TES V: Skyrim, while hacking is a fairly expensive minigame in which we will have to pass a ball from the left to the right side of a pattern without hitting vertical lines that move up and down.
Even the weapon upgrade requires the solution of a kind of minigame during which we have to connect three chips of the same type to increase damage, stability and rate.
These mechanics are not fully exploited because the linear level design does not require us to think carefully about the next move and to look around often, thus weakening the search for any other accesses. As for the longevity of the title, it will take about 7 hours to finish the main story, reaching a maximum of 10 with the secondary and setting the difficulty to Extreme.
Not technically inspired
Technically Terminator: Resistance is not very inspired, on the contrary, the quality of the whole is barely sufficient with characters modeled so-so, facial expressions that seem to come from a generation ago and settings overall good but always the same. The design of the enemies does not particularly strike us always facing the same type of threats with few variations, including robotic spiders and bipedal turrets.
The sound also has ups and downs with good effects of explosions and weapons, but an English dub that doesn't make us stand up to applaud (subtitles in español are present).
In some more excited phases we have also noticed gods drop in frame rates not negligible.
Final comment
Terminator: Resistance fails to save James Cameron tie-in production. Of all the titles that have come out over the years, this is probably one of the best, but it didn't take much. Teyon's video game has no peaks either from a narrative or a playful point of view. If we talk about aesthetics then, we hardly reach the sufficiency. We are not facing a total disaster, because there are some good mechanics, but it is really too little.
