Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines Impressions

Atari is showing off an early two-level demo of its upcoming first-person shooter based on Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. The game may not look like much at this point, but it can certainly claim to feature the most accurate-looking model of Arnold Schwarzenegger ever seen in a video game.

The game appears to follow the story of the upcoming feature film of the same name, which has Arnold starring as another Terminator unit sent back in time to protect the 18-year-old John Connor from the evil T-X, played in and out of the game by Kristanna Loken. The levels are broken up into missions. In one of the demo levels, you, as the Terminator, must find John Connor in 2003, who has been locked in an animal cage inside of a veterinary hospital. When you finally find him and free him from his cage, the Terminatrix attacks, and the game switches into a rudimentary side-view fighting game. The animation used in this fighting sequence is very, very rough, so hopefully Atari has plans to beef it up to make it more enjoyable before the game is released.

The game's other level has you controlling a Terminator in the future, making a one-man assault on a SkyNet facility. This level, as you'd expect from the future, is very metallic-looking, and here you're attacked by skinless Terminators and flying drones.

The game sports some pretty solid-looking CG sequences at this point, but the game itself is currently a bit too early for us to get a solid feel for it. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines will be coming to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox later this year.