Platinum Trophies For Everyone!

Terminator Salvation is infamous for it’s super-easy platinum trophy, but is there anything more to this movie tie-in. There is, but it’s all downhill from here. The movie was awful so if you were holding out any hope for the video game you need a check-up.

Terminator Salvation is generic to the core. Generic doesn’t always mean bad, there are plenty of generic shooters which perform well, and have some fun elements to them. In this case it means bad. The game is a cover-based third person shooter and that’s about it really. There’s no fun to be had or challenge to enjoy, it’s just a third person shooter with an average cover system.

You should drop your hopes for a movie tie-in if the main character refuses to reprise his role, and that’s exactly what Terminator Salvation’s Christian Bale did with this game. The rest of the cast are back though, it’s just a shame that none of them have the star-power to draw people in in the first place. Without Christian Bale nobody would’ve even seen the movie, and even though the movie was bad, Christian Bale was at least mediocre.

This game is boring, the visuals are incredibly bland, and leave much to be desired. Not once do you feel like you’re wandering through the war-torn cities of a Skynet controlled world. You feel more like you’re in an everyday tunnel, or an average park. There is no character to the setting whatsoever. Theres even less character to the actual characters, who all seem to have that famous ‘resting bitch-face’ issue and deliver their lines with less enthusiasm than a guy with diabetes at a donut shop.

The game clocks in at around 4-5 hours on the hardest difficulty, yet that still feels like a chore to play through due to the repetitive combat and drawn out, forced cutscenes. There is only the one game mode in Terminator Salvation and that is campaign. Luckily you can play through this in co-op, but making a friend play this with you is just going to lose you a friend. There was originally meant to be a multiplayer mode, but it was cut to release the game on time with the movie, similarly to the situation with the latest Battlefront game, but at least the Terminator team got it the right way round. There is no reason to replay this game due to this, and the trophies are all unmissable through one playthrough on hard difficulty.

The AI in the game is pretty good, for this game at least. Most bigger enemies require being shot from behind though, so if you’re playing through alone their hail of bullets will just follow you so you can’t get behind them. Its rather infuriating. this may just be the reason the AI feels like it stands out, as without the need to get behind them the enemies would be even easier to kill.

Metacritic gave TS a 43/100. I struggle not to agree, with the one and only redeeming factor being easy trophies. Terminator Salvation is a must-have for a trophy whore, but a must-not-have for anyone else.

4/10

Conclusion

‘A horrible game both inside and out. The developers should be terminated and Christian Bale should be knighted’.