Terminator : Resistance (PC) First Impressions!

Very excited that this game is already back in stock on cdkeys.com! So much for all the dismissive whiners – it was out of stock on there AND at instant-gaming.com on day of release. I can’t comment on Steam but then who with a brain thinks Steam is the most competitive source for PC games?!

I bought it tonight and I’ve just finished trying it out. And I’m quietly confident about it so far! I don’t know just how big the game is, and I don’t want to look that up to spoil it for myself. But it seems to have the potential to be a grand adventure.

From the trailer it gave out the impression it was a straight shooter. However, this is not the case. Now and again you actually have some dialogue choices:

Now suddenly you’re into RPG territory – and this is fine by me! After all, a straight “let’s shoot all the Terminators and stuff!!” would be extremely short lived wouldn’t it – and you might as well have made a phone game.

The cut-scenes are actually very cinematic – I was really impressed with those. The ‘quests’ are varying in length so far so you don’t get that on rails feeling – equally, although a lot of the play area is conveniently blocked off by rubble you do get a sense of freedom – unlike the totally on-rails experience that the so-called “deep” and “immersive” God Of War gives you, for example, where you are completely unable to deviate from the exact paths the game wants you to take when you’re on foot. Also pleased to report that, much like I think you’d find in reality : fire will burn and kill you. You think this is an insignificant thing to mention…? Not when Ghost Recon: Wildlands considers fire to be simply part of the foliage. I will never forget blowing up a car in that game, climbing on top of the still very much alight car, and…nothing happening to me. Yeah fine realism there, UbiSoft (a studio probably at least 20x the size of Teyon).

But I digress. Back to this game. The game uses the Unreal 4 engine and I have to say makes pretty damn good use of it too. The world is bleak and apocalyptic – which is handy really considering it really needs to be in a game like this! Considering you can wander inside and out of buildings they’ve done a pretty full on job of the game world. The starting scenes certainly were very exciting to play through – definitely reminding me of the opening scenes of Terminator 2. Lighting effects are also used really well.

The music is fairly simple and sounds like it was pretty much all done on a synthesiser – but you know what? So was most of the music for the first Terminator film! And I have to say with total honesty, the simplicity of the music works really well! It gives the game a great atmosphere whilst you’re exploring and so far has been nice and varied.

Being a ‘sort of’ RPG, you also have some skills you can improve, and this is done via a rather simple skills screen:

Also as you can see this same screen gets you your current quests and your Inventory too:

There’s been a HELL of a lot of “trade items” in the short time I’ve played it but so far, I’ve yet to really see what I’m exactly going to be able to trade to of any worth with my dozen milk cartons. But hopefully all this becomes clear as I play further. I’ve also only come across a place to even trade any of them in the form of a crate by the bus (see final screenshot). I don’t know if there will be other places I can trade what is becoming a massive sack full of random stuff.

The voice acting is sadly bringing the game down somewhat. It varies between half decent and mediocre.

But what you REALLY want to know is, “how do those fucking Terminators look, Stephen?!!?!?“. Well, I’m here to report they look FUCKING COOL!!!! I couldn’t a really good look at one of course or I’d have been terminated, but they move really fluidly and the detail is brilliant – for my money this is so far THE BEST representation so far in the gaming world of a Terminator – and Teyon definitely should be proud of that achievement.

So all in all, taking all things into account, this game I would say is: SUCCESS! No it might not be THE slickest game out there in terms of gameplay mechanics and graphics and voice acting. Who cares?! What you get a sense of playing just the first half hour or so of this game is the effort and love they’ve put into this game. And also do take into account the comparisons I’ve made with game developers with far deeper pockets than this one has. I recommend it. 4/5 stars.