A kind of tie-in game to the latest film release in the Terminator franchise, Terminator: Dark Fate, Polish studio Teyon have made Terminator: Resistance, which gives off almost the reverse Terminator effect. This means that it feels like a blast from the past rather than something that breaks new ground.
The game might run on the latest Unreal Engine, but it looks way behind the times in the graphics department. Saying that though, most environments do have key details, and the explosions and other effects do work well, but the character models and the guns you use remind me of a very early Xbox 360 game not something that has been released at the tail end of the next generation. This game even uses the last generation’s graphics trick of using a grey and brown colour palette to hide its shortcomings.As previously mentioned, the character models look like dodgy Madame Tussaud’s wax models and act very robotic (if you pardon the pun). The frame rate also jutters along when there is a lot happening on-screen.
You may be thinking at this point that this is going to be a wholey negative review, but this game does have some excellent points. The biggest positive has to be the atmosphere. There are some really dramatic moments that really put you on the edge of your seat, and the audio used is incredible. The soundtrack really sets the mood of the game and has similarities to the original movie’s score. The voice acting is very well done as well, which is conflicting when the dialogue comes out of a wax figurine.
You play as Jacob Rivers, a member of the resistance who manages to avoid death at the hands of the Terminators that have been built to kill him. You escape the annihilation line and team up with a small group of other survivors, and your aim is to just continue living. Whilst this sounds interesting in theory, the story is quite boring and a bit stale.
There is no Oscar-worthy narrative here, and you don’t really care about the characters’ storylines as they never try and hook you in with an emotional tale. Your ragtag group of survivors are probably the most fascinating part of the story due to the dialogue options you have with them as what you say to them will affect the impression they have on you. The lip-syncing though was very hit and miss.
What this game gets right is making sure you feel how powerful the Terminators are. They haunt areas of the landscape and do provide a credible threat to you. This creates its own issues as you feel you have to be stealthy to avoid them, and the stealth system feels incredibly backward. There is a bar at the top of the screen that tells you if you have been detected by the enemies, but this bar is visible on the screen pretty much all the time and kills some more of the atmosphere. The scary Terminators though are quite blind, and even if they spot you, you can just crouch around the corner and they will forget you were there.
The Terminators can pack a punch, but all the other enemies are quite feeble. Killing these enemies provides you with chips that can be used to upgrade your rifle and make it even easier to beat them. You can hack turrets to be on your side as well and help you out in battles. The mini-game you play to hack the turrets is essentially Frogger without the frog, which is probably one of the more fun parts of the game.
I did have some fun playing this game, I must say. This is more down to the funny glitches and poorly made moments that brought me the most joy from this game. Sneaking through a large bunch of T-800s or running away from an ambush do keep the action alive and the interest level moderately high. You are better off though downloading the Terminator skins for Gears 5 instead of picking up this game.
Developer: Teyon
Publisher: Reef Entertainment
Platform: PS4, Xbox One, PC
Release Date: 15th November 2019
Do you agree with our review of Terminator: Resistance? What are your thoughts? Tell us in the comments below.
