Category: Editorials & Retrospectives

  • Retrospective: Terminator: Resistance

    Retrospective: Terminator: Resistance

    Initial reviews for Terminator: Resistance from traditional media were broadly negative but, within a few hours of launch, positive user reviews emerged. It didn’t take long before comment sections, Reddit threads, and several YouTube channels were full of positive sentiment – ranging from outright praise to cautious recommendations. As someone with a fondness for janky, mid-tier games that would never score higher than a seven, this piqued my interest.

    Perhaps as a testament to its underdog popularity, it took a long time for Terminator: Resistance to hit a price point I deemed suitable for a low-risk purchase. I eventually picked up the Xbox One version to play on an Xbox Series S – the release day experience, I guess? – and while I don’t begrudge my purchase, I found it a staggeringly middling experience elevated by one standout element.

    The storytelling is dated but it adheres to the canon

    Although the storytelling feels last, last-gen, one of Terminator: Resistance’s unexpected strengths is its strict adherence to the canon of the original timeline from the first two Terminator films. The date Skynet acquired sentience; Judgement Day; the formation of the human resistance; the emergence of Terminator Infiltrator models; the Time Displacement Equipment; the endless cycle of diverging futures – all these plot threads are accounted for a worked into its narrative.

    I had assumed Terminator: Resistance was going to avoid messing with canon by telling a stand-alone story set during the Future War but, by the midpoint of a 13-hour casual playthrough, it became clear Teyon developed it as a prologue to the films. John Conner makes an appearance (and Kyle Reese in the Annihilation Line expansion), there are references to other important figures in dialogue, and the protagonist – Jacob Rivers – participates in significant events that lead into the opening of both 1984’s The Terminator and 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

    The story itself is fine, with a few highlights whenever the game ditches the open-zone approach for more linear set-piece-style sequences, but the entire middle portion drags – especially if you’re tackling side missions. The tightly controlled opening sees Rivers saved from a Skynet ambush by a suspiciously knowledgeable stranger, who guides him towards a ragtag group of survivors that – after a few hours of hunting for clues – finally put him in contact with the local resistance. If you can tolerate the assortment of clichéd character archetypes, the opening provides several tense set pieces and some rapid relationship-building.

    The primary missions see you search through abandoned resistance outposts, sneak through a Skynet-controlled hospital to free some captured resistance soldiers, come face to face with the Terminator Infiltrator that has been tracking Rivers, take down an HK-Tank, and storm the central core. The more open zones offer no shortage of rudimentary fetch quests to raise the trust level of the civilian survivors that, in turn, reveal more of their backstory and the current state of the world.

    It’s a dated but familiar structure, however, the dialogue- and choice-driven role-playing elements feel half-baked. Regardless of the choices you make, or whether you complete or ignore side missions, 90% of the experience plays out in exactly the same way. There’s always an easy alternative as to why events can still occur as the central narrative and ending sequence is beholden to the first two Terminator movies.

    The longer you play, the more obvious it is that the civilian survivors are irrelevant to the overarching plot – yet account for the bulk of the role-playing moments. Any significant changes to their fate are mostly relegated to a narrated montage, while the system feels so transparent that it’s easy to get the “best” ending. When in doubt, be nice and always follow the stranger’s advice.

    Ultimately, they felt like an excuse to add “depth” to an incredibly basic choice-and-consequence system and the in-game impact is minimal. Two optional survivors you can save during the prologue just hang around in corners doing nothing. Completing a mission to find a puppy or chalk for the young survivor Patrick leads to a few visual changes in the shelter, but primarily serves to notch up the trust meter of his sister Jennifer. The same logic applies to the doctor, Erin, and mechanic, Ryan – with higher trust levels from completing side missions making it easier to influence their fate leading into the finale.

    Of course, no RPG is complete without romance options and both Jessica and resistance leader Baron fall neatly into the “damaged woman looking for a strong man” archetype. Your trust meter is also your ticket to potential romance – with one or both of them, Terminator: Resistance doesn’t judge. If you’re foolish enough to select the dialogue options with a heart next to it, you’ll be treated to some spectacularly bad first-person sex scenes – featuring music and moaning straight out of vintage pornography – serving as a reminder that fade-to-black is always the right choice in video games.

    A bit of this, a bit of that, all of it average

    So I’ve had a dig at the storytelling and limited choice-driven outcomes, but it’s the traditional gameplay mechanics that make and eventually break Terminator: Resistance. The best way to describe it is a scaled-back Fallout 4 set in the Terminator universe.

    It’s no open world but you explore smaller open zones sequentially as the story plays out and the situation evolves. You’ll interact with minor characters and even fight alongside small groups of resistance soldiers – typically impervious to harm until the plot decides otherwise. It features similarly janky shooting that never feels as responsive or precise as a dedicated FPS, at odds with the ability to hit weak spots to inflict critical damage. It’s competent enough – and maybe better when using a mouse and keyboard – but the focus is clearly on upgrading Rivers’ abilities and arsenal to produce bigger damage numbers.

    I feel part of that initial post-launch positivity has a lot to do with the opening hours. You’re stuck with an assortment of conventional human firearms that are fine for spider scouts and drones, but larger robots force you to get an angle on their weakspots to do significant damage. Although encounters are rare and heavily scripted at first, the hulking Series-800 Terminators are invulnerable to standard firearms and need to be stealthed past or, if you’re flush with crafting resources, pipe-bombed.

    If you up the default difficulty a notch to make all mistakes potentially fatal, the opening hours force you to explore the semi-open environments carefully, use the rudimentary stealth system to get a good angle before attacking, engage in hit-and-run tactics against groups of foes, and scavenge continuously to craft explosives and healing items. It feels like the kind battle resistance fighter would be waging and the Terminators prove a particularly terrifying enemy that, as a bonus, requires no complex AI. Once detected, they march doggedly towards you at a brisk yet unhurried pace, their red eyes and plasma shots emerging from the distant gloom.

    Of course, Terminator: Resistance has RPG-lite mechanics integrated into the gameplay too, so you’re constantly earning XP towards new levels and investing skill points into three branching but straightforward tech-trees (Combat, Science, and Survival). There are some powerful abilities at the end of each branch – think health regeneration or the ability to use Terminator weapons – but most are just incremental upgrades to damage done with weapons and explosives, increased toughness, more effective stealth, and improved efficiency when crafting, lockpicking, and hacking.

    In theory, this gives you some control over your character build but it doesn’t pan out that way. Firstly, skill upgrades are level-gated so you can’t super-specialise early on. Secondly, while you can prioritise your point distribution within these level brackets, there’s more than enough XP to unlock all but one or two skills by the finale. You become a powerful all-rounder irrespective of your preferences.

    Another unbalanced mechanic is the ability to upgrade plasma weapons by creating a sequence of three circuits, which offer buffs like increased damage, clip size, and fire rate. They come in different rarities, and the connector types you need to line up is randomised, but you can eventually loot or buy dozens of them, letting you tear through many Terminator types with ease by the mid-game.

    If I wanted to be harsh, I’d describe Terminator: Resistance’s mechanics as wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle. However, that relative simplicity in tandem with the short runtime work in its favour. Although the mid-game drags on for too long and returns you to the same regions too often, it remains a more-ish experience. Every outing means XP for new skills, access to new weapons, and a few new upgrades.

    The importance of looking the part

    So far, so six out of ten – but Terminator: Resistance has a trump card.

    Even accounting for the increased resolution and texture quality offered on PC, Terminator: Resistance is not a technically impressive or beautiful game – but it does have some style. I earlier compared it to a scaled-back Fallout 4 and that holds true for the visuals. The environments look dated and lack fine geometric details but the overblown volumetric lighting and depth-of-field are used to create an oppressive atmosphere and mask many limitations, like distant scenery.

    Although missions set during the day can look flat and washed out, most of your excursions are after nightfall when the world is drenched in shades of cold blue, lit by the harsh glare of fires, piercing spotlights, neon plasma colours, and glowing Terminator eyes.

    Character models are not particularly well-animated or expressive, but humans look suitably detailed and, most importantly, a lot of attention has been placed on recreating the iconic Series-800 Terminators, other recognisable machines like the HK-Aerial and HK-Tank, and the Resistance weapons.

    The soundtrack – unfortunately not available officially – is the true star of Terminator: Resistance. It feels like a diverse original score, not just a reworking of Brad Fiedel’s iconic themes, and could have been a perfect fit for the 1984 original or the sequel. It’s one part electronic rock, one part marching band drum beat, one part moody synthwave, and consistently incredible – well, aside from during the aforementioned sex scenes.

    It elevates almost every moment, regardless of whether you’re skulking through ruins hiding from the spotlight of an HK-Aerial; circling around the world’s least competent HK-Tank in an otherwise dull boss fight; or charging the defences around Skynet’s Time Displacement Equipment with a reprogrammed HK-Tank, dozens of resistance fighters, and neon plasma bursts crisscrossing overhead.

    Style over substance?

    Wrapping up, I can now appreciate how Terminator: Resistance has cultivated a modest but vocal fanbase, especially among fans of the original timeline movies. Hell, I’m even tempted to pick up the PC version at some point – though damn you Teyon for making that a requirement to play the Annihilation Line expansion.

    Terminator: Resistance reaffirmed my belief the audiovisual experience can’t carry a game, but it sure can elevate it. Sadly, in this case, it’s from a middling six-out-of-ten game to a mildly entertaining seven-out-of-ten – the sort of game that’ll always find an appreciative fanbase that might keep it popular enough to warrant a better sequel at some point.

    Between its adherence to events in the original timeline, neon-soaked colour palette, and satisfyingly authentic soundtrack, it’s by far the best Terminator game – or at least the best FPS Terminator game if you’ve got a soft spot for the 8- and 16-bit crossover titles. However, if you’ve got no nostalgic hook or limited playtime that you’d rather fill with only quality titles, you can easily give it a skip.

    Terminator: Resistance was played on Xbox Series S|X. It is also available on PC, Xbox One, and PS4/5 (and got an Enhanced edition for PC and current-gen consoles with a DLC campaign).

  • Editorial: Old-Gen games in need of ray-tracing

    The new generation of consoles and PC hardware is now upon us with some serious juice under the hood wherever you go. Loading times, thus far, have been rendered inconsequential thanks to SSD’s but one of the latest graphical updates has to do with the new GPU’s and ray-traced lighting techniques. A computationally expensive procedure, ray-tracing was previously relegated to pre-rendered frames for animated movies, with real-time usage a pipe dream.

    Now, thanks to evolving GPU technology, real-time ray-tracing is here and is the latest visual upgrade for games pushing visual fidelity to all new highs. Not only are we looking at real time reflections but a much higher quality of in-game lighting as well. If you’re lucky enough to own one of the newer consoles or GPU’s then you can already see the quality difference that this brings to the table in the games that support the features or have been designed with them in mind.

    With that in mind, Andrew and I are taking a look back at some games from yesteryear that ray-tracing – whether for lighting or fancy reflections – could really make stunning.

    Adam:

    Deus Ex: Human Revolution:

    Now you may be wondering why I didn’t pick the sequel, Mankind Divided as that was a visual stunner at launch with some fantastic materials and lighting to push the dystopian cyberpunk vibe. Part of it has to do with the fact that Mankind was already beautiful at launch but the other part has to do with the fact that I think Human Revolution is a better game. When Human Revolution came out, it too was a visual marvel during the PS3/Xbox 360 era, though you may not think that now. It became the standard by which I wanted to see cyberpunk visuals, and it also became one I wished I could see running at much higher resolutions. It’s setting alone is prime ground for the enhancements brought along with more realistic lighting and there’s a wealth of neon light and metallic and glass environments that could do with some reflections. It would go a long way to making a great game even better.

    Mirror’s Edge:

    DICE’s phenomenal parkour game didn’t light up the charts on launch, becoming a cult classic that, surprising everyone, birthed a sequel. Once again the sequel on PS4 boasts better visuals, but I believe the first game needs an update and to be released back into the wild for new players to discover. With its minimalist and stylised colour palette, Mirror’s Edge is groundbreaking in visual design whose limited use of colours still makes for one of gaming’s most breathtaking playgrounds. And though it’s use of mostly whites, oranges and reds may make you wonder why Ray-tracing would be needed, the materials themselves are perfect for enhanced lighting and reflections on metal and glass surfaces. The way light is rendered with a Ray-traced system in the games outdoor areas would be jawdropping alone.

    Need For Speed: Heat:

    Racing games have always been – and still are – a perfect showcase for next gen hardware. Complicated visuals along with pure speed really show off a systems power. Now while Heat is not an old game, and already has some gorgeous visual effects in it, it’s still a “last gen” game meaning that those complicated visuals are built on old techniques. Yes there are reflections, but they’re built around the Screen Space Reflection techniques rather than been real time. The game also showcases some gorgeous nighttime visuals with a whole lotta neon and rain effects that blast by at a stupendous pace. It doesn’t hurt either that it’s actually a pretty good game. Now take those already sumptuous visuals and throw some next gen Ray-tracing power at them and imagine just how much better it will all look. Real time reflections on the cars, windows and puddles along with even better lighting during both the day and the neon powered night time. Tell me that doesn’t get your V8 revving.

    Andrew:

    Bioshock 1 and 2:

    I’m conflicted about this choice as the visuals in the Bioshock are incredibly stylised and adding accurate, more-realistic reflections may alter the look irreparably. That said, I’d still be interested to see what a crumbling Rapture would look like given the amount of glass and water present in both games.

    Plenty of time is spent trudging through dark, ruined locations, but it’s rare you’ll go more than a few minutes without seeing reflective glass windows, ceilings, and transit tunnels with views of the seafloor. Given the ongoing collapse of Rapture in both games, there’s also water everywhere – plenty of opportunity for puddles and other water-slicked surfaces to reflect their surroundings.

    Crysis 2 and 3:

    I’ll happily admit I played this sequel before going back to the original and, if you forced me to pick one, I’d sooner replay it (or the third game). Maybe it was the fact I had shifted towards console gaming at the time but I found exploring a ruined New York, with so many identifiable locations, thrilling. 

    Breaching quarantine in Crysis 2 was still an incredible moment, looking up at massive skyscrapers and down full of streets wrecked vehicles, flaming storefronts, and burst water pipes. It’s a prime opportunity to have ray-traced reflections everywhere. Even the more overgrown version of New York in Crysis 3 has plenty of shiny CELL facilities to explore. It could even introduce a novel tactical option if you could spot enemy patrols by their reflections while stalking the ruined streets.

    Halo: The Master Chief Collection:

    To be fair – given the focus on battling across the titular Halo rings – this update may be unnoticeable for large chunks of each game. However, there are still plenty of shiny human and covenant-made locations in each game that could be improved with ray-traced reflections (just think of how incredible accurately reflected plasma trails would look in enclosed spaces?). 

    The otherwise bland “Library” level in Halo: Combat Evolved, Cairo Station in Halo 2, the towers you raid during “The Covenant” mission in Halo 3, any time spent as the rookie exploring the Mombasa streets at night in Halo 3: ODST, Promethean facilities in Halo 4, and New Alexandria in Halo: Reach – all of these iconic locations could look even more spectacular with ray-traced reflections.

  • Retrospective: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 (2014)

    Retrospective: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 (2014)

    The origins of that undead scallywag Dracula was a story I never cared to see. You see, when you’re trying to give a beginning to some of entertainment’s truly big bads, it’s very difficult to create a story that can outdo the mystique around those characters.

    In 2010 developers Mercury Steam in conjunction with Kojima Productions managed to do just that. At least in the Castlevania universe they did. Players took on the role of Gabrielle Belmont in what was a dark and twisty narrative that saw him go from the right hand of God to, well, the Prince of Darkness. The game drew some fantastic voice acting from Robert Carlyle and Patrick Stewart as we saw how doing the right thing took Gabrielle down the dark path to becoming one of the greatest monsters who ever unlived.

    Coupled with some fantastic visuals in linear levels, that showcased exactly what classic 2D Castlevania levels would look like in 3D, the great combat in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow set up the beginnings of a fantastic series that was all too short lived.

    In 2014 Mercury Steam released Lords of Shadow 2. The game drew on what made the first game so great and then translated it into what I had always wanted from a Castlevania series: a sprawling, epic open 3D world.

    Now this wasn’t the first time that Konami had attempted to translate Castlevania from its 2D origins to 3D. The PS2 saw two 3D entries in the series while the N64 saw two 3D entries of its own. All four games are better left in the past and, in many ways, best not mentioned again either. Capcom’s original legendary Devil May Cry became the closest to a good 3D Castlevania game I ever thought I would get.

    Lords of Shadow 2 surpassed my expectations of what Mercury Steam would be able to develop. Set both in the modern day and the medieval past of the castle, Lords of Shadow 2 pulled out some fantastic vistas for you to stop and marvel at along your journey. The modern day sections were set in a city that was built upon the dessicated bones of Castle Dracula while the more supernaturally set medieval sections of the game were a triumph of epic, screenshot worthy vistas.

    Mercury Steam managed to translate the Metroidvania style into 3D. As you once again took on the role of an underpowered Dracula, the more you explored and fought, the more powerful you would become and this in turn opened up new areas for you to explore, to both progress the game, and find secrets. It certainly could not have been an easy feat, but I always felt that Lords of Shadow 2 nailed this aspect of what made Castlevania so great. It was an absolute joy to explore the environment which added a grand sense of majesty to the narrative.

    While the exploration is the main reason I truly love this game, the combat was no slouch either. Dracula uses his own blood as a weapon, creating his own version of the now iconic Castlevania whip. However there are new offensive and defensive moves and weapons. The dash and counter system needed to be mastered to be truly effective, especially in later fights, while two new weapons, the Void Sword and Chaos Claws helped you to heal and deal with armored enemies respectively. Using them would drain your magic meters so there was some tactical play in when to use them.

    As much as I loved Lords of Shadow 2, it launched to rather mixed reception. In short, the game didn’t do well with low sales. Add a lot of apparent behind the scenes drama and negativity and Lords of Shadow 2 became the last entry in the series.

    Having replayed it yet again recently, Lords of Shadow 2 still holds up fantastically in environment design and combat, though, visually, its age is starting to show. The PS3 and Xbox 360 era games have a tendency to be rather… muddy. The fantastic exploration still remains highly addictive and the combat is chaotically cathartic and challenging still.

    While the story may have been definitely concluded, this is Castlevania and Dracula after all, who has more than once proven that you can’t keep a good Count down. That said, the chances for a series revival for this are non-existent. The chance of some sort of HD remastering is also non-existent considering the poor sales. Thankfully if you have either an Xbox 360 or PS3, you can still play the game. If you have an Xbox One or an Xbox Series machine, the Lords of Shadow series is part of the Backwards Compatibility program meaning you can still give it a go there, and I highly urge you to.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I feel a need to explore a certain musty old castle again…