I’m in a bit of a pickle here. I do not think I can be trusted to make reasonable judgments of GRIN’s games. They made Bionic Commando: Rearmed. In a few months, they’ll have finished the new Bionic Commando. I can’t be trusted to talk about their games. I owe them too much. I apologize. Then again, I think I can give you a fair impression of GRIN’s Terminator Salvation. I got an early look at their tie-in, a prequel to the upcoming movie of the same name, at the beginning of the month. It doesn’t look like a bad game, not by any means. For a movie tie-in, it actually looks very good. But as a GRIN game, Terminator Salvation is a little disappointing.
Terminator Salvation is, like almost every other game made by GRIN, a third-person shooter. You play as John Connor and you run around a post-nuclear-apocalypse Los Angeles shooting evil red-eyed robots who don’t like you. You shoot the robots with shotguns and machine guns. To avoid getting shot by the robots, you hide behind walls, or take cover, if you will. A number of AI partners follow you around Los Angeles to help in shooting these robots, but you cannot give them direct orders. Their tactics work like this: if you go right, they will go left. There are on-rails shooting levels every now and again. That’s about it. From the three sections I got to see played, two early on-foot levels and one on-rails section, it all seemed competent. The shooting and cover seem to work. It looks nice, much as the other Xbox 360/PS3/PC games built on GRIN’s Diesel Engine do, even though the animation is still a little stiff. But there’s just no hook, nothing that makes Terminator Salvation distinguish itself from the rest of Gears-of-War-Clone crowd.
In an interview with Edge, GRIN’s CEO Bo Andersson said, "Our director, Ulf, who comes up with the ideas for our games, says that he'll do whatever IP where he has the opportunity to realise his new gameplay idea. If he's offered the next Terminator game, for example, he'll do it because he has a good gameplay mechanic thought out for it." Ulf’s got a good track record. GRIN’s Wanted: Weapons of Fate spices up third-person cover by having you constantly jumping and rolling around the environment to chain cover points together. Its shooting lets you curve bullets around obstacles to hit hidden enemies. Very novel. Their PC versions of Ghost Recon: Advance Warfighter 1 and 2, like Terminator, have you playing with a squad of AI partners, but you have direct control over their tactics, and you actually create a determined battle plan for your team at the beginning of a level. All of these little tweaks and twists on the exact styles of play in Terminator Salvation are missing, and there are no new ideas to replace them. I didn’t see Ulf’s “new gamplay idea” in this demo. I’m not saying that every game should have something as exciting as a grappling hook in it, but I expected something fresh.
I’ve got to give them one thing. The on-rails level demoed was a really swell use of the license. I’m no huge fan of Terminator. I love the original movie, like the second, loathe the third, and am completely indifferent to everything else Terminator-related, especially Terminator Salvation. The previews look fine, but where’s James Cameron’s awesome and bleak Los Angeles? McG’s human freedom fighters have assault helicopters and body armor and nice guns! They’re wearing make-up! It’s ridiculous. Terminator Salvation: The Videogame’s on-rails level, however, has you and your team piling into crappy, destroyed pick-up trucks, racing across crumbling city streets, and trying to shoot down one of the flying terminators. It looks like this:
Which is a whole lot like in this, between 1:32 and 1:40:
That’s pretty sweet.
(I lied. One thing Terminator-related I am not indifferent to is Summer Glau, who I would one day like to take to dinner and subsequently marry.)
Related links:
Dr. Spock vs. The Watchmen vs. Terminator: The New Movie Tie-In
Curveball: Hands-On With Wanted: Weapons of Fate
Trailer Review: Wanted
Gone Vertical: Hands-on Bionic Commando
