Terminator: Salvation
Warner takes the Gears of War approach to its upcoming videogame of this summer’s blockbuster movie sequel.
The buzz term for many modern-day shooters on console is ‘cover system’. No cover system, no joy… unless we’re talking about Resident Evil 5 that just about gets away with having next to none whatsoever. Since the Ghost Recon and Gears of War series ramped up cover-system style gameplay this has given rise to a whole subgenre of third-person stop and pop shooters – just in time to rescue those of use growing weary of bog standard run and gun first-person shooters.
Terminator Salvation gives you one of the most sought-after, if not ‘dream’, protagonists in all of science fiction – John Connor, leader of the resistance against the machines. Connor and his men are up against hall-of-fame sci-fi nemeses T-series robots against a backdrop of post-apocalyptic Los Angeles.
No videogame since 1984 has come within a nanometre of capturing the same degree of true Terminator thrills as this latest effort from Warner. The creative team at Stockholm based GRIN studios have the collaboration of movie-FX studio Halcyon to thank for most of that. But after GRIN’s entertaining though samey and short-lived Wanted: Weapons of Fate, we’re most interested in the depth of gameplay on offer.
At preview stage we’re only allowed to mention three areas, two on foot and the other ‘on rails’ – in other words manning a turret-gun on the back of a truck, a scene you’ll have burned onto your retinas if you’re roughly the same age as Connor in the game (30-ish) as a similar routine features in the opening minutes of the first movie.
Let’s deal with the turret-gun business first as it highlights the visual prowess of Terminator: Salvation. It takes place on a badly damaged section of freeway where motorbike-style Terminators seen in the movie trailer are the main enemy, ‘Moto-Terminators’ who’ve targeted a school bus packed with terrified human escapees. Our last ‘on rails’ highlight was in GTAIV The Lost and Damned involving cop cars and helicopters, and the explosive chaos here is at least on par with that. We’ll be grateful for such moments of release because the majority of the game is played much more strategically “…if you want to survive”, as the saying goes.
On foot in the Hollywood Hills you’ll encounter Skynet enemies that have been created especially by GRIN and Halcyon just for the videogame. And the thinking behind these is pure gameplay driven – it’s not just about the visual effects here, rather how you’ll work as a team to distract and flank the new machines. Low-flying, relatively small drones will chase after noise. Team mates having found good cover can draw their attention while John and a squad mate take aim. Similarly the larger machines have weak spots that can only be exposed by ambush techniques.
This is where we should highlight the cover system as it applies to Terminator, because GRIN has implemented an option to run diagonally between cover whereas most other games only allow for hopping over or lurching sideways. It ups the pace, and adds to strategic options when dealing with the enemy. This combined with the height advantage / disadvantage of tiered locations really sets the stage for almost every confrontation to be a memorable one.
So far we’ve only one gripe with Terminator Salvation, though it could be seen as major. The co-op mode can only be played in split-screen, not across Xbox LIVE or via PlayStation Network on respective Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms. We’re told this allowed the team to improve the experience, focusing on off-line gameplay. However we’re almost certainly going to be wishing we could team up with other humans to finish this fight come 15 May.
