Review NaN of 8
, from Fall River, MA
Price Paid:
$10.00
from EB Summary:
To be honest, when I first saw the pics and video footage of The Terminator: Dawn Of Fate for the XBox, I wasn't really that impressed. The graphics or gameplay didnt really look all that impresive. Well, last week a friend of mines managed to spot Terminator: DOF at a local Electronics Boutique for a mere $10. He ended up grabbing one for himself and gave the other to me as a Christmas gift. So how was it? Well, it was much better then I expected, but at the same time has numerous flaws that hold it back from being high quality.
If you don't know The Terminator story yet, then heres the basic run down. In the near future, machines begin getting very smart. So smart that they begin thinking for themselves and decide to eliminate their human makers. Then a man named John Conner rises up and begins to lead others to fight against these machines in an attempt to save the human race from extinction. As the war went on, the machines began losing. As an effort to change this, they send a robot back in time to 1984 to try and kill Johns mother Sarah before he can be born.
That's the basic run down of things. The story in Terminator: DOF takes place completely in the future era and not in past or present like most other Terminator games that have been released over the years.
Terminator: DOF gives you 3 different characters to play as. There's Kyle Reese from the first Terminator film, Catherine Luna, and Justin Perry. Each of the characters essentially plays the same. I couldn't really see any difference in them aside from the way they looked. Still, its pretty cool to have 3 of them here to play as.
For weapons, you are given a variety of goodies including machine guns, grenade launchers, C4 explosives and canister bombs. You can also take control of certain gun turrets found throughout the game to give you some real firepower. I really enjoyed these scenes. One of my favorite guns however is a special rifle which shoots out a wave of energy that temporarily shorts out any machine in its path. This baby has massive spread and can disable even the most powerful machines.
The actual gameplay sort of reminds me of Resident Evil. Only thing, Terminator: DOF feels much faster paced and there's nothing really much in the way of puzzle solving. To sum it up, the typical level goes like this. Go into a room, wave after wave of Terminators and other robots will attack you. After killing all the bad guys, gather any loot such as ammo or credits then move onto the next room and repeat. When you beat the level, you can buy power-ups such as armor or health boost. After that, you move on the next level and repeat the same thing. You'll run across an occasional switch to flick or person to protect, but the gameplay remains pretty much the same in each of the games 10 levels.
Like I mentioned earlier, Terminator: DOF has some serious problems which hold it back from being great. The most bothersome of these problems is the hideous camera. The camera in the game doesn't stay behind your back like it should, instead it frequently and automatically changes depending on where you are in the room. This not only screws up the controls, but it really screws you up your sense of direction as well. The camera problem also makes fighting far more of a problem then it should be. Half the time enemies will appear far off the screen and shoot at you long before you know their even there. This becomes worse when you start getting flooded with enemies attacking you. Yeah, you can switch to a first person view to help you scout out the room and spot enemies better, but when your in this view you can't move. This makes you an easy target for bad guys and more often then not, you'll end up getting hit before you even have a chance to aim.
There is a target lock you can use which really helps, but this feature is flawed as well since you can't see what your targeting half the time because the camera. The lock on also has a nasty habit of locking onto walls where there's nothing to hit. I swear the game does this purposely to pi-ss you off.
The enemy AI also isn't the greatest. Its often very slow to react and sometimes won't react at all. For example, if you go in a room with a window, and there's a Terminator right on the other side, then it wont attack you. You can stand there just a few feet from it and blast away at it through the window and it wont react. Enemies also won't react if you attack them at a very far distance as well.
There's nothing really much for game modes here. You simply just get your 10 missions to play though. However, there are a number of extras which can be unlocked such as Max Ammo, First Person and All Guns. These are pretty tough to unlock though since gaining them requires you do really well in the game to earn medals. The horrid camera makes sure that getting all this stuff unlocked will be a difficult and frustrating task.
Graphics 6:
When I first turned the game on, it was way too dark to even be playable. After turning the brightness up a little, things looked much better. As I mentioned, the cameras are horrible. They really hurt what would otherwise be an above average looking game. The levels themselves look nice and are pretty detailed, characters are a little lacking in polygons giving them a slightly blocky look. However, they animate very well so I can accept their blocky look a little more. Plus, what's up with Kyle's hair? He looks like he has an afro. Also, it seems that the developers didn't seem to get the rights for Arnold's likeness as the Terminator he played in the first film looks nothing like him.
Sound 9:
The sound in this game impressed me. The sound effects such as gunshots and explosions sounded great. The music on the other hand, features some really cool sounding heavy metal tunes. And of course there's the classic Terminator theme which plays occasionally.
Finally there's the voice acting. While not the greatest acting i've heard in a game, what's here sounds pretty good. I thought Catherine Luna's voice was especially good.
Control 4:
The control would probably be really good if it weren't for the horrid camera screwing things up. You'll be running in one direction, then the camera will switch and you'll find yourself being forced to run another way. It gets really annoying really fast. Other then that, the controls are rather simple to learn and easy to use. It shouldn't take anyone more then 10-15 minutes to master them.
Overall, I did have some fun with Terminator: DOF. While its certainly not a horrible game, its not a great one either. I really wish the games developer Paradigm would have spent a little extra time cleaning up some of the glitches and fixing the camera. The game feels more like a beta then a retail version. Its a shame too, since this would be a really great game if it was cleaned up some. I guess the games publisher Infogrames/Atari just didn't care and wanted the game out before Christmas no matter how incomplete it was. When it comes to big name movie licenses, most companies just don't care since they know their game will sell on name alone. Anyway, I can only recommend this game either if your a huge Terminator fan, or can grab it for $20 or less.
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