For the past 10 years or so the mid-budget game development has been considered, for all intents and purposes, dead. It used to be that magic range of titles that had a lot of the ambitions of the AAA titles, but on a much lower budget, yet also had a lot of that inventiveness and honesty that’s usually expected from small budget titles. And it could often do things that the indie scene often couldn’t – like working with a movie license. Licensed games, especially those tied to a movie release, also were due for a new “this is actually really great” release, if not on the Chronicles of Riddick: EFBB level, at least something like X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Well, now we have it. Say hello to Terminator: Resistance.
This game is basically an FPS/action RPG with mostly open levels that you can explore as you desire. There’s also a strong emphasis on stealth, as expected from a game based on The Terminator franchise, but don’t expect it to be anything like Alien: Isolation. No, this is more like a mix of Metro 2033/S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Fallout 4 and Far Cry, except very simplified, very story-driven and far smaller in scope than all of those games and series.
You get to learn most of the basics in the few opening levels. Some of those levels are highly scripted and linear (and they tend to be the worst of the bunch), some are linear, but go mostly at the player’s pace and these are fun, and some are large open maps that you get to explore and complete objectives on, these are also super fun. Your ability to stealth is basic and is based on the line of sight and while it is very beneficial at the start, especially when you first meet the T-800 series, the titular terminators, as the game progresses it becomes far less important. At least on the normal difficulty. And that’s actually not bad, since the pace in the game is really well done, and at first you will still be limited on resources and will need to consider which weapons and ammo to use to be most efficient.
Later into the game you get progressively more powerful (and fun to use) weapons and it becomes more of a pure shooter, yet you’re still motivated to plan ahead and strike quickly, because you don’t survive long in the open. You get more efficient with skill upgrades as well, and the system here is surprisingly well-done, never feeling like that typical “just made it because everyone is doing it” feature. Exploring levels is fun, shootouts are fun (apart from the few annoying scripted sequences), maps are good, surprisingly even during the daytime, although they do look even more moody and cool at night. And, probably most surprising of all, the story is solid as well. In fact, this game manages to tell its story and be a fun game in under 15 hours, fitting in lots of twists, choices and consequences, a potential romance and solid world-building with several well-developed, if simple, characters. It is, pretty much, “just right” – going for as long as it needs to, doing exactly what it wants, adding variety and fun side-stuff and keeping a consistent pace.
You can, of course, feel that it’s a limited budget production. The voice acting for most of the characters, including the main one, is pretty bad. There’s a lots of cut corners when it comes to visual fidelity, though, I must say, the game still looks good. Some things feel oddly balanced. Enemies literally spawn out of nowhere often times (your visor sees through walls, so you can actually see enemies just appear where there were none before). The music is more or less just a bunch of arrangements on the themes from the Terminator, and they’re not great, just serviceable. And the game couldn’t keep doing all it wanted to do, with all the different approaches to problems and mini-games all the way through, by the end it abandons those skill-based mini-games altogether. That said, I haven’t encountered any bugs throughout the game and a lot of little things and nuances in the game were surprisingly well-thought out. I’d argue, in some cases better than in some of the big budget titles this game took for inspiration.
Terminator: Resistance is not what Alien: Isolation was for Alien-based videogames, no. And it probably wouldn’t have been even with a bigger budget. But it is a really-really good game if you like the exploration focused and story-driven mixes of FPS and action RPG. And it is probably a joy for those who absolutely love the original Terminator movies, I’m not that of a fan to truly appreciate that aspect, but I could admire it. And probably most importantly – Terminator: Resistance is simply a really well made fun game. If any of what I’ve described sounds interesting to you, definitely check it out.