In Terminator: Salvation, you take control of a non Christian Bale John Connor to rescue a group of stranded resistance fighters caught in machine Central.

Let me start by saying that this game is terrible. It is a generic third person shooter with very few things going for it. First of all, there are five types of enemies in the whole game: there’s the annoying little flyer, the spiderlike bots, two models of the T units, and a boss ship. Usually encounters with enemies are a variation in the number of these four baddies. You might get 12 flyers, 4 spiders and 1 T unit, or 2 spiders and 2 T units. You shoot ‘em up and you move along. Find some more, shoot ‘em up, and move along. There are no collectibles, no unlockables, no nothing.

The AI in the game is positively moronic, both friendly and enemy. You will often see enemies aiming at walls, even when you’re shooting at them. Friendly AI is probably worse; sometimes they’ll just sit there without shooting or attempt to help you, making for some incredibly frustrating moments. There is a little bit of variety in the gameplay to be found, as some levels put you on rails and have you shoot at the same 4 baddies while the AI drives you around.

Terminator: Salvation tries to implement squad based mechanics, and you will always have friendlies by your side. I wrote the game “tries” to apply squads because your allies are usually morons. They do help out in bringing down the flyers, though, and you could just sit behind cover while they do this. However, show them spiders or T units and they become about as useful as a poop flavored lollipop. I can see how this game could be fun when playing coop with a partner (splitscreen only, BTW), but I can also see the fun lasting 35 minutes or less.

The game’s only redeeming quality is the cover system, which is ingenious and handles nicely. You hit L2 (LT) to stick behind cover. If you want to change to another cover, you hold the left stick in the direction you want to move and a radial menu appears. Simply choose your next destination with X (A), and Connor will relocate with a pretty cool animation.

Graphics in this game are extremely inconsistent, you may have sections of the game (especially outdoors) that are satisfying, and other sections with PS2 quality graphics. Textures are generally rough and offer very few detail, character models are bland and uninspired, and environments fluctuate from pleasant to just drab. You will see many jaggies, and might even experience a few framerate drops, however, I didn’t witness any screen tear.

The story is superficial and has no tie in with the movie. In fact, the reason the game is called Terminator: Salvation is probably to ride the summer blockbuster’s hype train. You will meet the characters from the movie (plus Angie, which is probably right up there with Slippy as the Most Annoying Character in Video Game History), but none of them feature the voices of the actors.

In the game, your squad is about to evacuate from a dangerous part of LA when they receive a distress call from some resistance fighters trapped behind enemy lines. The high ranking officer orders the soldiers to disregard the call and continue to evac, but Connor is too noble for that. He embarks on an extremely short journey and meets new friends along the way. That pretty much sums up the whole story.

Terminator: Salvation is a game that was made for a quick buck. In fact, I wouldn’t even recommend renting the game unless you are a shameless trophy whore like me (the game has a total of 12 trophies: 11 gold and 1 platinum). If this were a PSN game, and its price tag were $20, I would’ve been much more forgiving with the review, but this is a $60 game, and paying that high a price for a bad 5-hour (or less) long game is just criminal. Stay away from this train wreck.

Score: 35