Publisher
Atari

Developer
Black Ops

Released: November 11, 2003
Genre: FPS
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen

4
5
6
4
4.2

Supported Features:

Now, with the release of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines in theaters last summer and DVD this holiday season, it’s only natural that the game industry gets a fresh dose of James Cameron’s techno-thriller. With 21st century technology, fresh movie material, and for the first time ever, official approval and endorsement by Arnold “The Terminator” Schwarzenegger himself, I had high hopes for this latest look at Judgment Day.

The hype began at E3 with a private demo that really impressed me, then continued throughout the year with plenty of interesting info and intriguing screenshots. Even the DVD release of the movie included a special section that featured Arnold and the design team hyping the game big time. By the time I popped Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines into my Xbox I was understandably excited.

My hopes and dreams of actually slipping into Arnold’s boots and wearing those trademark sunglasses were quickly shattered. What could have been the opportunity of a lifetime had been squandered away on a poor game design and an even worse FPS engine. Designed by Black Ops, T3 shares the same pathetic 3D engine that sent Fugitive Hunter to the bottom of the charts the day it released.

To make matters worse, the game tries to mirror the events of the movie, arguably the shallowest film in the series. Movie-inspired games are always at a disadvantage, but when the movie is “bad” the problem is only magnified. Black Ops tries to hide their abysmal game engine and uninspired story with a cyber-scanned Arnold model and dialogue from the actual actors, but even these features can’t save this game from Armageddon.

Your first missions have you fighting through several war torn levels, blasting robots, and trying to infiltrate SkyNET to access the time portal. Once you make the time warp the rest of the game unfolds almost scene for scene according to the movie. The gameplay is quite schizophrenic with long levels full of enemies and plenty of action in the beginning and short boring levels full of fist-fighting and unintuitive karate movies making up the rest of this miserable experience.

T3 shows its core weakness in the very first level where the flakey game engine rears its ugly head. Controls are horrible, not just for a console FPS but for any game. First, you cannot customize the controls so you are stuck with the layout the designers “think” is best. Targeting is practically automatic, and you only need to be facing in the general direction to hit your target. Not that they would be hard to hit anyway. With the exception of the flying robots most of the ground forces just stand there and suck up the energy bolts until they smoke and drop. With AI like this it’s a wonder SkyNET conquered the planet.

The T-850 is weak, both in his ability to jump about as far as a frog inside a box and his ability to throw a grenade about the same distance. Seriously, you have to backpedal after throwing a grenade to avoid your own splash damage. The Terminator Vision mode is fun to look at but more distracting than anything else. The only time it comes in useful is for scanning the environment to locate those hard-to-find elements required to trip the next scripted event or escape the level.

For those that have seen the movies you will know it is a “prime directive” that the Terminator doesn’t kill anyone. Not exactly good source material for a FPS game. I guess he could use harsh language but who would understand him through the accent. You can blast a few tons of scrap metal in the future, but when you get to the present you are reduced to limited gunplay and one of the worst fighting engines in history.

You might remember that the movie featured several encounters with Arnold and the T-X (hot female Terminator), and these encounters are what drive the second half of the game. Since our hero and villain are impervious to weapons you are forced to kick, punch and flip your opponent in a very jerky and unnatural fighting game that reminded me of the primitive fight engine in the old Face Off hockey games from the late 80’s.

I hate to keep stacking issues on the “bad” side of the scale but the load times in Rise of the Machines is horrible and for some reason you have to reload the entire level if you want (or have) to restart it.

Rather than building a killer 3D game engine to do justice to the Terminator franchise, Black Ops relied on their Fugitive Hunter engine, an engine and a game that was scoffed at as a $19 budget title. Now they are trying to polish this turd with a Hollywood handy-wipe and sell it for $50. Obviously, most of their game design budget went into Arnold’s pocket, but even his famous mug and tiring one-liners aren’t enough to save this doomed title.

There are a few nice things I can say about the graphics. There are lighting and particle effects that look okay, but these are scripted effects rather than dynamic so they look the same each time you see them. The environments are subject to damage but again, it’s not dynamic but merely one of three transitional states of unbroken, broken, and demolished. The vision mode is a pathetic attempt to imitate the same style we have seen in Alien vs. Predator or even Metroid Prime, but the scrolling text doesn’t tell you anything, its just to make the screen look “busy”, and it’s not even an effect so much as just turning everything 16 shades of red.

The levels are not that complex, and the repetitive textures are remarkably simple and even a bit boring. Character design is equally simplistic for everyone other than the Arnold model and a few key players like the T-X. With the exception of the Claire Danes characters, Arnold and Nick Stahl’s characters look really good.

Animation is poor with your average human encounter animated at about 4-6 joints making them look like poorly controlled puppets. For all this lack of sophistication, the game is lucky to achieve an acceptable 24fps (standard for TV and film) and more often than not dips well below that. The game supports HDTV modes, which only shows the designers lack of priorities.

The music borrows heavily from the established Terminator themes for the opening and the menus then sinks into a comfortable military score that we’ve heard many times before, but for some reason, seems strangely uncomfortable in the Terminator universe. Nothing will ever beat the Tommy Talarico techno score he did for Terminator on the Sega-CD.

Sound effects include plenty of futuristic laser sounds and explosions, and realistic conventional weapons fire. The environments sound better than they look with plenty of realistic ambient effects, and it’s all delivered in a nice Dolby Digital presentation.

I lost interest around level two, but out of obligation to the integrity of this review I finished the game, painful as it was. I muddled my way through the troublesome interface, clumsy fight engine, and uninspired gameplay in about 11 hours. If you just have to play a Terminator game then rent, but avoid a purchase at any cost unless the cost is cheaper than the rental fee.

It should come as no surprise that when you start with a poor film, add on a terrible FPS game engine, and then blow your budget on a lead actor at the expense of anything that resembles a fun or challenging game, that you have all the ingredients for a colossal failure. Rise of the Machines isn’t the worst Xbox game I’ve every played but it’s in the bottom ten.