TERMINATOR: RESISTANCE / DEVELOPER: TEYON / PUBLISHER: REEF ENTERTAINMENT / PLATFORM: PC, PS4, XBOX ONE (REVIEWED) / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The iconic Terminator movie franchise has a rich history of videogames, spanning over several decades and almost every console imaginable. However, with only a couple of exceptions, these games have invariably been absolute duds. Coinciding with the recent release of Terminator: Dark Fate, T:R doesn’t exactly have huge shoes to fill, but can it buck the trend and become the first ‘must have’ Terminator game?

Set during the familiar future wars (which we see glimpses of in T1 and T2), players take control of resistance soldier Jacob Rivers through an offline single player first person campaign, in an attempt to take down the oppressive forces of Skynet’s robotic army. There are several somewhat open world interlinking areas to fight through and you will spend the majority of the game shooting various cybernetic pests (although there are some exploratory elements and a few minigame-style sections to contend with as well). Jacob has a whole host of NPCs to interact with and various dialogue choices he can make which will alter the way the story plays out.

Playing through the first couple of levels, a number of comparisons to other games come to mind: the immersive in-game environment is full of life and many of the cutscenes and interactions occur in real time, much like Doom 3. The traditional FPS elements are complimented by a light RPG system á la Bioshock, and there is a (fairly basic) weapons and ammo crafting system akin to a stripped-down Borderlands. Although all three of the previously mentioned titles were great games (classics even), the issue is the fact that they’re all between ten and fifteen years old. That, in a nutshell, is T:R’s problem – it feels like a game from a previous generation (ironic, given the subject matter).

At times, T:R can be an exhilarating experience – particularly if you’re a fan of the movies. Huge shootouts with scores of perfectly-modelled T-800s to the sounds of Brad Friedel’s iconic score, in the rubble and wreckage of a dystopian future, is about as 80s-awesome-tastic as it sounds. It might even be possible to excuse the choppy framerate, terrible AI, inconsistent graphical fidelity, poor texturing, terrible voice acting and even worse voice sound quality were it not for the fact that this is a full-priced game with a retail release. There is an awful lot to like about T:R but, truth be told, technically it’s an absolute mess. If you’re a big fan of either the Terminator movie franchise or slightly predictable shooters from the PS3/Xbox 360 era, then you’ll probably really enjoy this game. It would probably be an eight out of ten were it being purely rated on gameplay but, unfortunately, it isn’t…