Terminator: Resistance – Terminating the Terminators

The one big thing Terminator: Resistance got over Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance is that it’s set in the original Terminator movie timeline. That means it has the cool aesthetics from the Cameron films. John Connor is still kicking around and is leading the resistance in the future war against the silver Terminators, who look as menacing as ever. Sadly, beyond the cool visuals, this game is somewhat of a pain to play and in general a disappointment. I would also consider it highly overrated, seeing as it sits at a ninety-one approval rating on Steam. I can understand the appeal, and I too was into it at the beginning, but the whole experience is filled with awkward design decisions that in the end completely sink the title.

The future war
You play as Jacob Rivers (resistance fighter). The story starts with you getting saved by a mysterious stranger from being manhandled into minced meat by a Terminator. Right from the get-go, you understand that something is up with this mystery dude and that you will probably meet him again. However, at this time there is nothing else to do than to leg it as you have no weapons or anything else that can stop the Terminators from gunning down everyone and everything. You soon catch up with a couple of survivors and together escape the “annihilation line” on an old rickety school bus.

From here on, the story takes a turn for the somewhat interesting through the interaction with the survivors, which you can even help out if you want. See, Terminator: Resistance has light RPG mechanics in the sense that you level up by gaining XP, make basic choices in dialogue, and of course, do quests. These choices can affect the ending in different ways, and the fate of characters you meet. Gaming veterans out there know what this means: better do all the tasks if you want the best possible ending, and not end up as a dystopian hobo in futuristic L.A.

At this moment in the story, your survival is based on stealth and scavenging. Your actions make sense narrative-wise since you are the only one with real military skills. This means you are being sent on missions to scavenge and locate parts for the school bus alone. It’s so you and your crew can make it further away from the butchering. You will mostly be hiding, and taking out smaller robots, as the shiny two-legged Terminators are currently way out of your league. I was fine with the general gameplay and story here, but the issue is that all that running around alone, sneaking and looting of all kinds of crap is the mainstay of the game. Not to spoil too much, but you eventually make your way with the bus and join up with the resistance again. In the new resistance HQ, it’s clear that military operations are happening when you chat with your commanders and others in the hub area. However, the missions, as said, remain the same. The actual warfare, you know the cool things depicted in the movies, the actual fun stuff is left to others, outside a few scripted segments.

I found the whole thing incredibly lame because the story from here on out turns you into a one-man sneaking army. Tasked with incredibly critical missions into the Los Angeles wasteland that anyone with a brain would consider suicidal and plain dumb. It’s a major-missed opportunity in my opinion. It might make sense when you design a game around sneaking, shooting, and looting, but for a story that’s supposed to link up to the movie franchise, it just feels foolish to go down the Ubisoft open-world route of mechanics.

For around eighty percent of Terminator: Resistance, this will be it. You will sneak around solo, looting junk, and when you get weapons to kill Terminators with, you will do so. The magic of the Terminator universe, the danger of it, the despair, especially the future war part is pretty much wiped away. Let’s just say. If this is considered canon, Jacob Rivers is the sole hero of the franchise, much more so than John Connor. Since he will single-handedly destroy every piece of Skynet tech with no real problem and perfectly line up all the pieces for the struggle to actually exist.

Frustrating mess
I was just expecting something else, something much more akin to an actual war. That’s the whole point of people loving the vision of James Cameron’s Future War. The feeling of a desperate struggle, mankind’s last stand against its fate against the machines. To a degree, Terminator: Resistance succeeds, through its visuals and sound, but the gameplay execution is very lacking. You could still have the stealth segments, but imagine if the battles involved squad combat like it was from the movies, instead of the old solo hero taking down the machines by himself. The issue is also that the combat becomes frustrating, as there is rarely enough ammo to scavenge. So, it can’t even live up to the classic nature of a badass hero-shooter, since you will never have enough ammo. You need to search every corpse and hidden corner of the map for ammo, and god have mercy on your soul if you ever run out of plasma rounds. I found the overall experience frustrating, with odd design decisions all over, not matching the game genre that well.

Mostly, it plays as an FPS, but then you have stealth, looting, and different skills to choose from through leveling up. Like pick-locking. It feels like it wanted to be Fallout 4 in a way but set in the ruins of Los Angeles. I’m not sure what to make of it, yet at the end of Terminator: Resistance, I was fed up with it. The pacing felt awful, and while I recognize an effort was made, unfortunately, it was a pretty lackluster one. Not even meeting the legendary characters from the franchise made up for it. I didn’t feel their status was correctly handled. It felt so routine, with voice actors mostly just hamming it up, or doing very little to convey the emotions of these fabled heroes. 

In conclusion
Terminator: Resistance is not an altogether bad game, the shooting is competent, the graphics are fine, and the destroyed city of Los Angeles looks and sounds the part. The problem is trying to fit an RPG into what would have been much better a pure shooter, or preferably a squad-based tactical one. It turns the gameplay into something very mundane, that the desperate future war of the classic Terminator movie franchise really shouldn’t be. I don’t recommend the game, maybe only if you have a grave urge to dig for ammo to blast Terminators with, provided it comes with a hefty discount. Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance is the better title if you want to scratch the Terminator itch, even if it takes place in the weird alternative movie timeline.

Thanks for reading.

/Thomas

PS. Big thanks to smaug for gifting me the game.