This review contains spoilers
Terminator: Resistance is a first person shooter/semi-open world apocalypse simulator made by Teyon, whose only game that I know of was the awful rail shooter Rambo: The Video Game. FIlled with frustrating game design, the fact that this game exists felt like an impossibility, a strange miracle akin to Jesus being shot out of the poop cannon. Alas, it was a success, a pretty damn good one as well and reading the mixed to unfavorable reviews confused the hell out of me and made me question what kind of stuff the reviewers were smoking cause I actually really liked this title. I don’t really know how I knew about this title, but my guess is a buddy of mine wishlisted it, and then I saw it and was like “Awww hell yeah” and gave it a wishlist. For the review, I’m definitely going to give a shoutout to my buddy Steve, aka SuperPunchGod for buying me this game a couple of years ago for christmas. I originally played the game in 2021, but decided to give it another spin after the release of the Annihilation Line DLC that came out.
The plot starts out with Jacob Rivers as a member of the resistance, whose entire division was wiped out by Skynet and their Annihilation Line in 2028. He’s rescued by a mysterious stranger, and Rivers is able to escape with a group of survivors that consist of future love interest Jennifer and her little brother Patrick. However, through various trips in trying to get to safety it’s learned that his division was wiped out by an Infiltrator, a new unit developed by Skynet that seemingly NO ONE wants to believe is actually a real thing that could be used. I don’t remember too much from the plot, mostly because there’s a lot of predictability in the tropes it uses, what I do remember is that you eventually run into Resistance leaders Jessica Baron (another love interest whose not so great) and the legendary John Connor, whom you work for to find a scientist who was exiled after a mishap. After a bunker was wiped out along with the stranger who saved Jacob, Connor informs Jacob that the stranger was actually Jacob from the future sent to protect him from the Infiltrator, who comes from a future with a potential resistance victory. Eventually Connor and Rivers team up to attack the main core of Skynet and succeed in knocking them back a few notches; however this results in Skynet being able to send back Infiltrators to cause the events of T1, T2: Judgment Day and the events of this game. Endings result from choices made in game, such as romance options as well as the final choice: Do you want to get sent to the past to continue the loop or stay with Jennifer and Patrick to look forward to a brighter future? Again, this isn’t the full recap cause I had to jog my memory hardcore so shoutout to Wikipedia, but what I can say is that the plot is okay and the characters are decent for the most part. The standouts are the legacy characters and while the rest of it is sort of forgettable, the parts where they throwback to the old movies really elevate the experience to me. Other than that, the only thing I can say is that the hospital mission in the beginning is a pretty scary experience and also helps elevate the game’s standing.
The gameplay is akin to a combination of Far Cry (past 3) and Fallout 4 in terms of combat and its sort of RPG system. You level up a skill tree that consists of inventory space, explosive skills, crafting skills, basically everything that an open world game of its type would have. The guns are cool as hell, and vary from laser rifles and miniguns; to pistols, uzis and shotguns (which aren’t useful against the Terminators themselves). You can loot downed robots as well as the environments for parts so you can help craft all of these tools that’ll help. Some things that are useful are the Termination Knives, which help you stealth kill terminators in a nearby vicinity as long as they’re not looking in your direction. What I can at least say however, is that I guess if I were to look past my rose tinted glasses I can see why some people would give this aspect mixed reviews. The gameplay feels like a sort of cacophony of different systems from different games that have been done better there but for the most part it’s okay. The lockpicking from the Bethesda Fallout games are here (which I’ll say if it isn’t broken then don’t fix it) as well as a hacking game that consists of you playing Frogger with varying levels of difficulty depending on your skill tree. What I can say though is that with all of these, it works well enough that most people can play it just fine. The gameplay is more akin to something to be played in a casual way, and not some in depth game where you have to learn the systems and how to exploit it. The game also has a sort of semi-RPG system with dialogue choices, two romance options (one which is so painfully obvious to avoid it’s not even funny) and multiple endings. In this regard, the only problem that I have from this aspect was that a late game side quest confused me due to wording that felt like one outcome was going to happen but another thing instead and it affected my ending.
The art design and atmosphere is something that clearly a lot of love was poured into it. From the environments looking straight out of the prologue from Terminator 1 with the oppressive, gray skies to the futuristic aspect of the Terminator models, everything about this game screams love and perks out the Terminator fan service within me. You’ll find old haunts from the movies like Club Tech Noir, Big Jeff’s Burger, Robert Patrick’s likeness being used for a dead resistance soldier, shot for shot remakes of scenes from the old movies (only the future scenes of course), and even certain weapons like the Uzi make an appearance. All of this makes me cream my pants, and I can’t get enough of it because sometimes it’s okay to be a simp for fan service.
Sound Design is also pretty solid; the weapons sounds are phenomenal and sound either punchy or come straight out of the movies it feels like. Almost everything about the sound design is top notch in this regard, though I’d say that the voice acting could be a tad bit better. Realistically, mostly everyone did a decent job so I can’t really complain about that side of the fence. However, I’d like to say that the voice acting of main character Jacob Rivers (aka Generic White Dude 5) sounds like he’s trying to do an impersonation of a tough guy and just comes off kinda tame and generic. Obviously, with everything you can kind of tell that Teyon didn’t exactly have a huge budget to really 100 percent polish everything in the voice acting department, however even though Jacob is a standout snorefest I never really felt like it took me out of the moment?
Overall my thoughts are that it’s a pretty tight casual budget game with a lot of love for the franchise put into it and it clearly shows. It’s not a classic game by any means, in fact if I were to review it based on a score out of ten then it would be somewhere around a seven. Certain things could’ve been tightened up from certain predictable plot points, certain voice acting bits, stiff character models. But the game has a lot of heart and I can’t really say anything bad about it other than I wish that the Infiltrator Mode was more than just a one hour long mission. I’d say that this game was definitely the start for a sort of redemption arc for the developers, and I’m really excited for that new Robocop: Rogue City game that the developers have been cooking up. It has a really interesting concept and something tells me that it’ll improve even more from the formula that Terminator: Resistance came out with. Time will only tell, but my recommendation is to definitely give this game a try, and I’d also recommend the Annihilation Line DLC that while is a bit more difficult, definitely has more of that fan service to the eighties action franchise we all love.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The plot starts out with Jacob Rivers as a member of the resistance, whose entire division was wiped out by Skynet and their Annihilation Line in 2028. He’s rescued by a mysterious stranger, and Rivers is able to escape with a group of survivors that consist of future love interest Jennifer and her little brother Patrick. However, through various trips in trying to get to safety it’s learned that his division was wiped out by an Infiltrator, a new unit developed by Skynet that seemingly NO ONE wants to believe is actually a real thing that could be used. I don’t remember too much from the plot, mostly because there’s a lot of predictability in the tropes it uses, what I do remember is that you eventually run into Resistance leaders Jessica Baron (another love interest whose not so great) and the legendary John Connor, whom you work for to find a scientist who was exiled after a mishap. After a bunker was wiped out along with the stranger who saved Jacob, Connor informs Jacob that the stranger was actually Jacob from the future sent to protect him from the Infiltrator, who comes from a future with a potential resistance victory. Eventually Connor and Rivers team up to attack the main core of Skynet and succeed in knocking them back a few notches; however this results in Skynet being able to send back Infiltrators to cause the events of T1, T2: Judgment Day and the events of this game. Endings result from choices made in game, such as romance options as well as the final choice: Do you want to get sent to the past to continue the loop or stay with Jennifer and Patrick to look forward to a brighter future? Again, this isn’t the full recap cause I had to jog my memory hardcore so shoutout to Wikipedia, but what I can say is that the plot is okay and the characters are decent for the most part. The standouts are the legacy characters and while the rest of it is sort of forgettable, the parts where they throwback to the old movies really elevate the experience to me. Other than that, the only thing I can say is that the hospital mission in the beginning is a pretty scary experience and also helps elevate the game’s standing.
The gameplay is akin to a combination of Far Cry (past 3) and Fallout 4 in terms of combat and its sort of RPG system. You level up a skill tree that consists of inventory space, explosive skills, crafting skills, basically everything that an open world game of its type would have. The guns are cool as hell, and vary from laser rifles and miniguns; to pistols, uzis and shotguns (which aren’t useful against the Terminators themselves). You can loot downed robots as well as the environments for parts so you can help craft all of these tools that’ll help. Some things that are useful are the Termination Knives, which help you stealth kill terminators in a nearby vicinity as long as they’re not looking in your direction. What I can at least say however, is that I guess if I were to look past my rose tinted glasses I can see why some people would give this aspect mixed reviews. The gameplay feels like a sort of cacophony of different systems from different games that have been done better there but for the most part it’s okay. The lockpicking from the Bethesda Fallout games are here (which I’ll say if it isn’t broken then don’t fix it) as well as a hacking game that consists of you playing Frogger with varying levels of difficulty depending on your skill tree. What I can say though is that with all of these, it works well enough that most people can play it just fine. The gameplay is more akin to something to be played in a casual way, and not some in depth game where you have to learn the systems and how to exploit it. The game also has a sort of semi-RPG system with dialogue choices, two romance options (one which is so painfully obvious to avoid it’s not even funny) and multiple endings. In this regard, the only problem that I have from this aspect was that a late game side quest confused me due to wording that felt like one outcome was going to happen but another thing instead and it affected my ending.
The art design and atmosphere is something that clearly a lot of love was poured into it. From the environments looking straight out of the prologue from Terminator 1 with the oppressive, gray skies to the futuristic aspect of the Terminator models, everything about this game screams love and perks out the Terminator fan service within me. You’ll find old haunts from the movies like Club Tech Noir, Big Jeff’s Burger, Robert Patrick’s likeness being used for a dead resistance soldier, shot for shot remakes of scenes from the old movies (only the future scenes of course), and even certain weapons like the Uzi make an appearance. All of this makes me cream my pants, and I can’t get enough of it because sometimes it’s okay to be a simp for fan service.
Sound Design is also pretty solid; the weapons sounds are phenomenal and sound either punchy or come straight out of the movies it feels like. Almost everything about the sound design is top notch in this regard, though I’d say that the voice acting could be a tad bit better. Realistically, mostly everyone did a decent job so I can’t really complain about that side of the fence. However, I’d like to say that the voice acting of main character Jacob Rivers (aka Generic White Dude 5) sounds like he’s trying to do an impersonation of a tough guy and just comes off kinda tame and generic. Obviously, with everything you can kind of tell that Teyon didn’t exactly have a huge budget to really 100 percent polish everything in the voice acting department, however even though Jacob is a standout snorefest I never really felt like it took me out of the moment?
Overall my thoughts are that it’s a pretty tight casual budget game with a lot of love for the franchise put into it and it clearly shows. It’s not a classic game by any means, in fact if I were to review it based on a score out of ten then it would be somewhere around a seven. Certain things could’ve been tightened up from certain predictable plot points, certain voice acting bits, stiff character models. But the game has a lot of heart and I can’t really say anything bad about it other than I wish that the Infiltrator Mode was more than just a one hour long mission. I’d say that this game was definitely the start for a sort of redemption arc for the developers, and I’m really excited for that new Robocop: Rogue City game that the developers have been cooking up. It has a really interesting concept and something tells me that it’ll improve even more from the formula that Terminator: Resistance came out with. Time will only tell, but my recommendation is to definitely give this game a try, and I’d also recommend the Annihilation Line DLC that while is a bit more difficult, definitely has more of that fan service to the eighties action franchise we all love.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/