An absolute mockery of the Terminator.
The Terminator series have had their own share of games. From the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System all the way up to the Xbox 360 and PS3, most have been horrible and there is no question about it. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines falls exactly into that category. This game is just awful. And I mean awful. How in the world can they mess up the Terminator? There is very little about this game that is any way redeeming.
The game looks terrible. Every single environment for the first half the game has absolutely no variety at all. All you see, mission after mission, is destruction. And not the good interesting destruction you see in a summer blockbuster. The total destruction of anything the environment may have had to offer if the game were even halfway decent. Now midway through the game you go into the past where the movie starts off. Colors oh wonderful colors. No more gray, no more black, no brown, great, beautiful colors! You can actually see now and would have been able to enjoy the game had it not been for the fact that the brightness of the past shows just how backwards the graphics are. This game was released in 2003 and it looks like something out of 1999! Gah! Why did they do this to the Terminator? The most enjoyable part of the Terminator franchise was the special effects and how cool it was to just look at.
Taking it back to the future the enemies you fight are naturally the Terminator machines. Oh how cool it would be to fight the ultimate battle against Skynet I thought starting the game. What an absolute nightmare. The machines were at the absolute pit of awful AI. The machines would slowly walk up to you firing at a very slow rate no matter how hard you pound their metal shells with bullets, lasers, grenades, everything! The worst part about it is the glitches you encounter while in battle. You would knock them down and they would immediately be up again without an animation. They also tend to walk through walls which is just an insult any game. There are a few other machines you fight, such as the flying machines and tanks. Funny how they explode in such an elaborate way with gunfire without ever seeing any damage done to their hulls. The Terminators are only made different by the colors interwoven into their bodies.
To be honest I can go on forever with the faults with these legendary machines.
Halfway through you are transported into the past like in the movie. I won't spoil any of the events but it is an absolutely butchery of the movie. Most of the battles in the past are against the TX unit in a fighting game style battle.
Wait, what?
Yes, they even decided to go the Tekken route and make the battles against the rival Terminator in a fighting match. You can punch, kick and even throw! That is basically it.
There are a few escort missions in the game that are an absolute disaster. I won't even go into that.
Now when turning on any Terminator game you expect to hear the excellent score from the movie it is tied to. Oh how excited I was when I heard the main theme on the title screen. But this was just another letdown. The music is terrible in the game. Just terrible.
You can't forget the sound effects either. Now they did have the honor of the Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, reprising his role and providing his voice for the game. This was pretty much limited to the most painful saying you could ever hear in a Terminator game.
Terminated.
I felt like crying at this point. I guess I should say a few of the other movie actors also reprise their roles, although there isn't much to be said there.
The story is simple. You make your way to the time portal in the future and you play through the events in the movie. Other than that there isn't much.
Something that pretty much became a staple of licensed games would be extra content. You can see a few making of videos, play a few arcade games and you even have a demo of Terminator: Redemption. Really this was one of the few pluses of the game.
Is this game worse than Superman Returns? Surprisingly not. I doubt there could ever be a game with that honor.
2.5/10