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Hey remember that
movie with Schwarzenegger? You know, the one where he's unstoppable
and kills a lot of people? Oh.. oh right, well this is that movie
where he's a robot. Yeah that's the one. Well somebody made a game
out of it.
I'm torn on how
to start this review, for reasons you'll understand shortly. Okay,
how about this: I beat this game in seven minutes. There, I said it.
Make no mistake, that's not good for me, it's bad for this game.
Essentially, sometime
in 1992 when the T2 craze was high, someone at Virgin (trying to stick
their record-label nose where it doesn't belong) decided it was time
to milk more cash off said craze by making a game for the original
film. Trouble is, T2 came out a year before, so the "craze"
could be over before anyone knew what happened. Thus, in a mad rush
they collected their lead programmer, fed him the original Terminator
video and lots of Ex-Lax, and he sprayed the final product out of
his ass two days later.
This game has
four short levels. One, two, three, four. That's it. As I have already
mentioned, I beat this game in seven minutes. Though it does faithfully
follow the film's romp through LA, this is just a bad, bad joke of
a game.
They
fudge a bit on the first level, in which you infiltrate Skynet
to send yourself back in time after the Terminator - not in the
film, but that's okay. As Kyle "Hicks" Reece, you take
on the entire complex with a 3-pack of bombs and an endless supply
of grenades. Badass indeed, but rather ridiculous. Fear not though,
after you take out a couple of knockoff machines based poorly
off of what was really in the film (hey, why not actually use
the designs from the film?), you score yourself a machine gun
with infinite ammo. You then must fight an endless supply of Arnolds,
but again, don't worry - the machine gun blows them up in 1/3
of a second of gunfire. I must give them credit for the graphics
here, as the red emergency lights are quite groovy. Sadly, this
game is not Red Emergency Light Commando, and the rest
of the graphics are uninspired and resemble little to nothing
of the film's style. Reece also runs with the gait and animation
of an overweight 50 year old man. |
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Kyle is certainly free to have a problem with authority,
but one has to wonder if shooting every passing cop in the nards
is totally necessary.
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So
you blow up Skynet and appear in the present where you must run
along the streets and avoid The Man, aka the Fuzz, aka Piggy McGee,
aka the Po-diggity-o-leece. You have your shotgun-under-the-trenchcoat
disguise, as in the film, however it is nothing of a disguise
at all here. Every cop opens fire on sight, mixed with thugs throwing
firebombs. Upon pressing the fire button, you must wait a second
to whip your shotgun from under the coat before shooting. It would
be a nice touch if it actually worked as a disguise, but it just
gets in the way when everyone is shooting at you. If you dare
move while trying to fire, the animations get confused, and your
shotgun reappears under your coat as you take a step forward,
then try to pull it out again. The result: you neither move nor
shoot. I need not tell you this is annoying. |
Add to this the
fact that you can't take cops out of action, only stun them briefly
before they get back up and resume shooting. Add to this the fact
that your shotgun isn't rapid fire and cannot be upgraded, so the
next three levels are spent rapidly hammering the fire button, then
trying to flee before the cops get back up. Add to this the fact that
enemies you can't even see can shoot you from off screen with no problem.
The most amazing part of all of this is that it is NOT difficult,
simply annoying. Enemies freely drop health powerups like they were
fucking health piñatas, and fall reasonably quickly
to your wall of lead, it's just that having them snap back up like
nothing happened gets repetitive, annoying, and you're never rewarded
for your trouble.
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Okay,
okay, we want Ahh-nold, right? Well he makes three appearances
in the game. One is in a simple fight in a bar at the end of
the second level, again in the middle of the next level (Police
Station), and throughout the short final level. With the exception
of the final battle, Arnold consists of a reasonably cool looking
Terminator character (much better than Reece) with a short range
automatic rifle. To defeat him, you pound him with shotgun blasts,
during which he is stunned and does not return fire, until he
falls three times. On the third fall, he blinks while on the
ground and you can now run past him. Damn easy. The final battle
involves shooting a poorly drawn metal skeleton a few times
until it reappears as just the torso, after which it is invulnerable
and chases you to the end of the level where a metal press waits.
Run through press, Terminator follows, Terminator terminated,
game over. That's it. Your title villain is nothing more than
a "leetle-gurly-man."
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In short this is
a game of average graphics, poor control, horrible gameplay and a
pretty nauseating soundtrack that, again, doesn't seem inspired by
the movie at all. This is a rushed job, plain and simple. Much like
Total Recall, this is a mere shadow
of the movie itself, and even without the movie connections it's still
just a bad game.
-reviewed 12/16/01 - game copyright 1992 Virgin Games
Man those red lights look nifty.
FOUR LEVELS. Did you hear me? FOUR.. BAD levels!
The Terminator at MobyGames
The Terminator (film) at IMDb
Speed run at YouTube
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