Monthly Archives: June 2009

Games that get rushed out to tie in with movie releases are of a notoriously low quality, and often represent soul-crushing missed opportunities. While Terminator Salvation is a decent game, it could have been much better, and should be much, much longer.

It’s a third-person shooter with a few on-rails shooter bits in vehicles. Based two years before the movie you play John Connor who is leading a squad through the ruins of Los Angeles to save members of the resistance, all the while fighting off the machines. The action is pretty good – it has flaws, but for the most part is fun, surprisingly so for a movie tie-in game. The remixes of the film franchise’s iconic theme music also help keep it exciting for any fan.

The enemies you fight include the classic T-600 series Terminator in endoskeleton mode (without any flesh over the metal), as well as a rubber skinned version. This is the first time we’ve seen these – they were mentioned in the 1987 movie, but have never featured in a film or game until now. The most frequent enemies are Aerostats or ‘Wasps’ which are annoying little flying machines alongside pretty cool spider-bots. The motorbike Terminators that were in the freeway chase scene of the movie Terminator Salvation feature in a couple of the on-rails sections. Then there’s HKs (Hunter Killers) which are tough, large aircraft and have been in all the films (I’m pretty sure).

The combat is pretty good. There’s a great cover system which you have to use to survive. Moving from cover to cover in order to flank machines, then popping up and shooting over your cover, is basically how you carry out battles. The cover mechanic itself is a simple yet ingenious system which I’m betting many titles will emulate. There are a couple of problems with combat. When you’re behind cover, a T-600 can perform a one hit kill with a punch which clearly doesn’t connect with you, from the other side of what you’re crouching behind. The Aerostats also occasionally get stuck in walls. The enemies have very little AI (ironically) and generally stand in the open waiting for you to outwit them. Your teammates are generally pretty useless too, despite being invincible.

One of the best things about the game is the cool load screen. During each load (of which there are countless during the game’s short running time), you have a close-up shot of a Terminator’s face, which you can rotate around as subtle, ominous theme music plays.

The environments are generally samey and boring. There is some beautiful imagery throughout the game, mainly the very nice post-apocalyptic panoramas in the distance. But the levels are too often extremely repetitive, however, indicating laziness on the part of the developers.

The biggest problem with the game is that it’s criminally short. I clocked the single-player campaign on ‘Medium’ in around five hours over three sessions. I reckon you could fly through it in a single three hour session if you wanted to. This is ridiculous – it’s a full-price game, which means if you buy it you’ll be paying about $30 – $40 per hour to play it through. Not only is it crazy short, it’s completely linear, so there’s very little replay value. There’s no online modes although there is a local split screen co-op mode. This adds a little fun, but actually makes the game quicker and easier as in every battle you simply go to opposite sides and when the machine is facing one way, its weak spot is exposed to the opposing player.

The long and short of it is: this game is worth a rent for anyone who enjoys action games, especially if you’re into the Terminator movies. It’s not as bad as lot of movie tie-in games that get released, but is flawed, and insanely short.

For many months now, PlayStation 3 owning fans of niche super-power games have literally sat and twiddled their thumbs.

Crackdown on the Xbox 360 did great business, whilst City of Heroes/Villains as a MMO on the PC also provided an outlet for those wanting to garb up in tights and cape.

Well now we have inFAMOUS, the deliberately capitalised title from Sucker Punch Productions whose past titles included a trio of Sly Cooper anthropomorphic animal adventure games, mostly for the PS2.

Some will say that Sucker Punch have grown up with the release of inFAMOUS, but there is a lot of Sly injected into this more mature title.

Filling the boots of Cole MacGrath, players begin the game standing at the epicentre of a blast that has destroyed much of Empire City. From here it is necessary to quickly come to grip with the basic moves with inFAMOUS, because even this tutorial stage is a little unforgiving on those that have an exploratory nature. An early lesson in survival is that the electrically transformed Cole, does not enjoy a quick dip in Empire City’s water ways.

Almost immediately we are introduced to the supporting cast, as Cole tries to piece together his part in the quarantining of the devastated urban districts. Fellow courier Zeke fills the gap of semi-comedic side-kick, girlfriend Trish and mysterious FBI agent Moya provide much of the strong female roles in the game and other characters such as –the annoying- Dallas guide Cole through the story missions.

The missions in inFAMOUS are a strong point, alongside the story drivers there are plenty of diversionary side-missions to accept. Many, when completed, open up parts of the city, making them safe havens from the criminal elements that now inhabit the vacuum when structured authority broke down.

Many other side-missions fall into the ‘do-good’ or ‘do-evil’ dichotomy of choice. Here, an attempt is made by the game-designers to morally checkpoint the player into believing there are choices to be made in this game that will construct the on-screen make-up of Cole.

The reality is, as a gamer, the choice is nowhere as deep as the publishers may wish you to believe. Whist making any single choice does not mean players are forever destined to take either the good or evil path until the games completion, the reality is, in order to maximise the kick-ass abilities within the games fabric, Cole will need to wholly concentrate on the path of goodieness or baddieness.

Experience achieved during missions, and whilst roaming the street, is directly spent on powering up many of the sixteen “powers” Cole learns over the course of the game. So when confronted with the occasional minds-eye cut-scene, there is no moral dilemma, only min-maxing of power stats to be considered, this is the simple issue of linking a game about super-powers to an attempt an morale based story telling.

All of Cole’s powers are electricity based, and learning new powers is also linked to Empire City. Cole can explore the city maps (made up of islands, that are slowly unlocked as the game progresses), clambering up to the top of sky-scrapers (in scenes very reminiscent of Assassin’s Creed), sliding down power-lines that join buildings (A nod to Sucker Punch’s Sly Cooper series), rushing about at street level, or spending some time down in the – rather functionally ill-designed – city sewer systems.

In the sewers, Cole will reconnect power sub-stations that not only power up the grid within sections of the city, but give Cole access to new powers.

Eventually Cole with be bad-ass, either in a good or virtuous way, throwing energy blasts at the Dustmen, Reapers and other mutant or mechanical foes. Or Cole can level up the dark side powers, which are similar in nature but are powered by evil Karma choices made along the way.

Cole will still need to beatup the mutant gangs along the way, but he can be headless of innocent life or limb in doing so. Mind you, there is plenty of mindless destruction fun to be had, whilst exploring the lighter side of human nature also.

Blasting away at the semi-destructible scenery, especially automobiles is, well, a blast. Something that doesn’t get tiring quickly and the missions augment this sense of fun and mayhem in the most part.

There are a bunch of niggles with this title, clipping issues, a couple of graphical glitches (especially with the in-game water), AI that is heavy on the “artificial”, and a little light on the “intelligence” and the biggest problem of many, many broken missions. None are really show-stoppers, but they can be annoying from time to time.

There are times when your PS3 will freeze, and other times when you really won’t know what you are supposed to be doing. But the general, simple fun of the game will have you come back for more.

Other reviewers have complained about elements such as the accuracy of spawning enemies, blasting away at you from half a city block away, without being able to firstly see, let alone blast back. This becomes less of an issue the further into the game you travel; eventually you will be ignoring the ping-ping of gun fire, and only look to retaliate if some heavy fire power starts heading your way.

Then there are the chain-link fences. Whilst Cole can parkour around the city effortlessly, leaping from the top of buildings to ground level, bounding (in fact gliding) across whole city sectors with ease, throwing lightning bolts like some sort of modern day Thor, when he is confronted by a flimsy set of chicken-wire and curl of barbed mesh, he will be stymied.

Yep, these mesh fences are Cole’s Kryptonite, he cannot blast through them, he cannot jump over them; they add a strategic element to the Empire City geography that many have complained about.

I think they are great.

Sure, you can actually break through the chainlink fence texture (which is a bug), but giving Cole some weaknesses to overcome is part of being a super powered human. Even Superman needs a foil, something to take the edge of the overwhelming feeling of bad-assness that can otherwise ruin the challenge of a game.

Having said that, there are plenty of other frustrations that inFAMOUS could have done without, the stealth missions are just horrible, the stickiness of Cole’s ability to find a ledge to land on when jumping is just a little too sticky, but understandably necessary and finally the lock-on function is a little too hap-hazard.

But overall, inFAMOUS does a great job of giving players a sense of being a super-powered human, with a less than cheesy storyline, an environment not overwhelming large, plenty to do, see, explore and experience.

If you finished Terminator Salvation in under an afternoon, and are waiting for the release of Prototype , then this title will more than adequately fill the gap your itchy thumbs are craving.

Score: 7.5 out of 10