Game #1282: Terminator Resistance

 Game... Terminated.

 Terminator has never had much luck when it comes to videogames, but Terminator Resistance is here to buck the trend. This is a first-person shooter set in the future era of the series, meaning a grown John Connor, and instead of travelling to the past, you play as a new character who's unit has been wiped out and now he's out to survive.

 As a first-person shooter, it follows every modern trend you could think of. You must scavenge for resources, opening every box you find, and then use these resources to barter for objects you can actually use, as well as use them to craft items. There's a very simple, but welcome, skill tree, and as you play the game you get to spend skill points. Lockpicking and Hacking wound up being very important, since hacking and lockpicking grants bonus XP and allows you to find even more resources. Early on the game tells you that your choices matter, but they don't, they only affect if you get the gratuitous first-person sex scenes and which slides you get during the ending narration.

 As for the game itself, it's very linear, but every 'chapter' has large environments to explore, and you can even go after sidequests for bonus XP, resources and story bits. The game has sort of a survival feel to it, thanks to very limited ammo, so you'll need to craft explosives and ammo, mind your backpack space as well as healing items supplies. It works pretty well, if you ask me.

 The game is sort of interesting when it comes to the difficulty... initially, on Medium, it felt pretty easy. Ammo was scarce, but I didn't use a single medikit and never had to retry a single mission. Then, the game crashed... and I accidentally downloaded the update. Medium, post-update, is brutal, I even had to lower the difficulty 'cause I was bored of retrying so much, and the loading times in-between retries is brutal as well, so I got bored of waiting. After patching the game, the Terminators become brutal, and they can soak up a ton of damage before going down, incentivizing using cowardly tactics and explosives. It makes sense in-universe, there's a reason machines are overpowering humans in the mythos, but I felt it made the game sorta boring.

 Visually, it's kinda lackluster, the game is full of greys and blueish greys, which makes for a very monotone game. The graphics themselves look very sharp but a generation behind, which makes all the performance hiccups all the more noticeable, even though they aren't very frequent.

 Terminator Resistance is a fun little game, and I don't think you need to be a fan of the franchise to appreciate it. While not very unique or memorable, the gameplay loop is satisfying, and as dull as the environments are at times, the RPG mechanics make it engaging to explore every nook and cranny, be it for resources or to complete missions. Yeah, it's not bad.

 6.0