After playing through a few of the newer movie to game conversions, I finally thought the age old trend of creating sub-par movie to game conversions was over. To prevent my hopes from becoming realized Atari recently released Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, based off the summer blocker buster movie with the same name. Just like the majority of movie to game conversions, Terminator 3 relies too much on the license and doesn’t put enough effort into making the game fun. Read on to find out more.

The game continues the story of John Conner, who helped prevent Judgment Day and save mankind from total annihilation. Now he is in his twenties and he lives “off the grid” which means that there is no way to trace him, either by his home, cell phone, credit cards, or anything else. He is trying his best not be traced by Skynet, the network of machines that is constantly trying to kill him and have their war against humans. Skynet has created yet another highly sophisticated cyborg-killing machine called T-X, aimed to kill John Conner. John’s only hope is the T-800 Terminator who must triumph over the T-X model and help stall and eliminate the ever-looming Judgment Day.

Players start the game right after the T-800 model (Arnold Schwarzenegger plays this Terminator model in the movies) Terminator is captured and reprogrammed to help the human resistance. Players must progress though the levels and destroy hordes of incoming Terminators to get to the time travel device located deep in the heart of Skynet’s Headquarters. After players successfully get to the past they must protect John with all of the available resources from the diabolical T-X. The entire fate of the future rests on your shoulders, are you up to the challenge?

The biggest thing that prevents Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines from becoming a good game is the gameplay. Even though this is a first person shooter, there is no body detection while shooting the enemies. Players can shoot an enemy in the foot or head and it will take the same amount of time to take out the enemies. The controls of the game, while they are comprehensive, is not refined enough for this game. Players will fight more with the sloppy controls than the actual enemies shooting at them.
Players have the ability to lock on to enemies using another viewpoint. The problem with this is since the enemies move around, you have to move around to keep up with them (which is normal) but as you move the lock on will switch to other things, like a column you can blow up, or other things. To make things worse the camera in this game also becomes a hamper as well.

Each time setting has different weapons to be used. In the Present day players have access to 9mm pistols, shotguns, grenade launchers, machine guns, and more. In the Future players have access to different plasma and laser guns, rocket launchers, cannons and others. Even though there are a wide variety of weapons to choose from, it feels that each gun does the same amount of damage. What is the purpose in having all of these guns if they all behave the same?

The CGI cut screens in this game look pretty nice, but that is the only eye candy players will find. Everything, from the characters to the environments looks bland, drab, and downright awful. The texture use and the actual polygonal count is pretty low. The animation is down right laughable! All of the enemies have very little movement animation and look like sticks randomly moving around. Even though they are lower level Terminators, with less technical prowess than T-800 and T-X, they can move better than this.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines supports in game Dolby Digital and this is a good thing because it makes the movie to game transition seem more seamless. What makes this category even better is that Arnold Schwarzenegger voices his role in this game. While this is a great idea, players will get tired of hearing some of the game one liners as “outstanding”, “locked and loaded” and a few others over and over again. All of the explosions are well done, but it is something that you haven’t heard in other games of this nature. Another thing that is sad is the sounds for the guns, like I said earlier that all of the guns are practically the same, they all sound alike as well.
The one thing nice about this game is all of the extras packed inside. From the very beginning players will get to try a demo of Terminator: Dawn of Fate. As players progress and beat various levels they will unlock classic Atari games. Also players can unlock movie footage; behind the scenes look at the movie; Making of Terminator 3 the game, and many other goodies.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is rated T for Teen for mild violence and language. It supports in game Dolby Digital and HDTV support.

Gameplay 4.3
This is one of the most boring, repetitive, and shoddy First Person Shooters I have played in a long time.

Graphics: 4.4
The graphics are pretty shoddy. The only thing that is good to look at is the CGI cutscreens.

Sound: 4.9
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines supports in game Dolby Digital, but we are stuck listening to lackluster music and sound effects. At least Arnold Schwarzenegger provides his voice for the Terminator.

Difficulty: Easy
Players will fight more with the sloppy controls than the enemies. If players manage to get around the poor controls the enemies are a push over.

Concept: 4.0
This is a lackluster FPS that hopes that its well known movie license will make it a great game.

Overall: 4.5
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is a shoddy game that could have been something. This game has a very rushed feeling to it. The controls are not perfected, the aiming is way off, the AI is a push over, and the mission structure is laughable. If the developers gave this game a little more time to work out some of these issues they would have had a good game on their hands, instead we have this game. Only get this game if you are a die-hard Terminator fan and have to have everything related to this series.