Terminator: Dawn of Fate
Read our hands-on report of Infogrames' Terminator game, which serves as a prequel to the original Terminator movie.
Unlike the original Terminator, few movie franchises are revered almost two decades after they debut.But a full 10 years after the last installment in the series hit theaters, the public's outcry has convinced Arnold Schwarzenegger to take up the torch once again and return to the role for which he is best known. Oddly enough, planning for the Terminator video games at Paradigm Studios began in earnest long before the third movie was announced. As a result, the upcoming games will not feature the same plot or settings as their theatrical counterparts and will instead act as a prequel to the first Terminator movie. However, this has given the team at Paradigm plenty of room for creativity, resulting in a game that lays the foundation for the Terminator storyline while providing a unique yet engaging plot that Paradigm hopes will keep players on the edge of their seats.
As the prequel to one of the greatest action flicks of all time, Paradigm has quite a bit of responsibility in developing Terminator: Dawn of Fate. The development house is responsible for creating not only the back history for the property, but also the machines, characters, and tales that compose it. To this end, Paradigm has already done an admirable job. The story takes place just as Skynet has invented the first humanoid terminator. John Connor's army of humans, Tech Com, must beat Skynet to a time machine before the sinister corporation uses the device for its own bidding. But this is just the primary plotline--a variety of subplots add tension to the proceedings and help keep the tension at a maximum throughout. At the game's outset, one of Tech Com's leaders defects to Skynet after finding that his brother, a former Tech Com soldier, was left on the battlefield to die. The traitor, Alexander Stone, quickly becomes the game's primary antagonist next to Skynet itself. But ultimately, Dawn of Fate's underlying theme is the future struggle of man vs. machine.
During the course of Terminator: Dawn of Fate, you'll play as three different characters, but none of them bear likeness to actual characters in any of the movies. Apparently, there are separate licenses required for the franchise names and characters, and Infogrames has managed to secure only the former. Despite a lack of recognizable likenesses in the game, Paradigm has still managed to assemble a motley crew of playable characters. Kyle Reese is the gung-ho militant who will stop at nothing to crush Skynet under his combat boot, Katherine Luna is the femme fatale, and the boy whom Arnold protected in Terminator 2, John Connor, has taken up his destiny as leader of the resistance.
Much like Capcom's Devil May Cry, Dawn of Fate is played from a third-person perspective with an array of dynamic camera angles. And also like with Capcom's demon hunter, you can send your character in any direction you choose with the analog stick. In the early build we played, the quick camera angle changes took a while to become accustomed to, but the developer stated that this will be reconciled by the game's ship date. The rest of the control scheme is workable: The X button shoots your weapons, the B button makes you roll, the Y button reloads, and the A button lets you attack in a hand-to-hand style. To switch weapons, you must hold down the white button and then use either the directional pad or analog stick to select your armament from a menu. Pressing the black button lets you shoot from a first-person perspective, but you're unable to move while doing so--leaving you vulnerable to attack.
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- GameSpot Score6.6fair
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- Atari
- Paradigm Ent.
- Sci-Fi First-Person...
- Release: Sep 18, 2002
- ESRB: Teen
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