The Terminator is a platformer developed by Radical Entertainment based on the film of the same name. I'm pretty confident that most people only know of this game due to the Angry Video Game Nerd episode, and it definitely lives up to its nasty reputation.
The game takes place in the future war, putting you in the shoes of Kyle Reese, before later cherry-picking scenes from the movie for its set pieces. The game design is poor at best and nigh-unplayable at worst. Reese's hitbox is much smaller than his actual sprite, leading to many moments where you fall to your death despite having collided with the platform. The controls are also very floaty and this leads to difficulty in avoiding enemies. Normally you'd want to jump over the terminators' projectiles but you'll usually end up leaping right back into danger. There's also the infamous turret section that, even with an ample supply of grenades, is still pretty unfair as it's nigh impossible to destroy them without getting hit a fair few times. I didn't get much further than this, so the game might improve later on, but from what I've heard it doesn't.
The presentation is also rather ugly. The game starts at a hideous sewer level that not only looks bad but feels out of place with the film. Sprite work is basic at best and backgrounds are a mess of drab colors and messy tiles. The color palette not only fails to replicate the haunting blues and purples of the film's future war segments but is also unnecessarily muddy, with Radical having chosen the most vomit-inducing colors possible. This is, of course, complemented by the repetitive soundtrack, consisting of only a few simple beats and buzzes, not adding to the atmosphere at all.
I don't really know what I expected but The Terminator is probably one of the worst games I've ever played and feels like a low-effort no-budget project made in a month. The film itself could translate very well to a game, but Radical clearly wasn't up to the task. It's hard to give constructive criticism in this case because everything fails so monumentally that it really would be a better idea to just redo the game entirely from the ground up.
The game takes place in the future war, putting you in the shoes of Kyle Reese, before later cherry-picking scenes from the movie for its set pieces. The game design is poor at best and nigh-unplayable at worst. Reese's hitbox is much smaller than his actual sprite, leading to many moments where you fall to your death despite having collided with the platform. The controls are also very floaty and this leads to difficulty in avoiding enemies. Normally you'd want to jump over the terminators' projectiles but you'll usually end up leaping right back into danger. There's also the infamous turret section that, even with an ample supply of grenades, is still pretty unfair as it's nigh impossible to destroy them without getting hit a fair few times. I didn't get much further than this, so the game might improve later on, but from what I've heard it doesn't.
The presentation is also rather ugly. The game starts at a hideous sewer level that not only looks bad but feels out of place with the film. Sprite work is basic at best and backgrounds are a mess of drab colors and messy tiles. The color palette not only fails to replicate the haunting blues and purples of the film's future war segments but is also unnecessarily muddy, with Radical having chosen the most vomit-inducing colors possible. This is, of course, complemented by the repetitive soundtrack, consisting of only a few simple beats and buzzes, not adding to the atmosphere at all.
I don't really know what I expected but The Terminator is probably one of the worst games I've ever played and feels like a low-effort no-budget project made in a month. The film itself could translate very well to a game, but Radical clearly wasn't up to the task. It's hard to give constructive criticism in this case because everything fails so monumentally that it really would be a better idea to just redo the game entirely from the ground up.