Teyon, a company infamous for a terrible Rambo game has been handed the rights and opportunity to make another licensed game about an 80s movie franchise. However this time, they've managed to keep it from being another disaster like Rambo.
Terminator: Resistance is above all else, is a love letter to the Terminator franchise, with nods to all the movies backed by amazing sound design and model work in game to really sell that "future" war setting the game takes place in and honestly Teyon should be congratulated on the jumping up of quality from previous games.
What this game gets right is the environmental design and look and feel of the war torn "Future" of the Terminator franchise. Models of the titular Terminators also look fantastic, with them looking almost 1:1 with the movies. The music too is very inline with the original movie with heavy synthesisers in your ears as your hiding from a T-800 as its stomps ever closer to where you are. Plus visually during the night sections, this game looks down right amazing when you see tons of laser fire lighting up the environment as you see the glowing red eyes of your metallic foes.
Missions never felt boring or repetitive, say for the amount of outposts one can destroy that are just a way to earn more XP as side missions. Some characters also felt very inline with how the movies told us humanity had become in these dark time, with a cast of characters that give great insights into just how terrible life truly is now. The story is also really simple to follow, if not a little meh, but it's honestly refreshing to have a game that doesn't blow smoke up its windpipe by trying and failing to tell a "Complex" story and gives a very simple to follow one.
Whilst the highs of Resistance are really good, the medium to bad areas of this game are something to be desired. If you put a gun to my head and asked me to describe this game I'd have to say it feels like "A remaster to an early 2000s obscure FPS that never happened." The look and feel of the game screams classic FPS games, where you are plotted into a giant area to complete objectives, but feels very isolated and lonely due to being surrounded by enemies, and allies really only appear in cutscenes or during scripted missions. There's also this weird indescribable feeling of stiffness while playing the game, where it sometimes feels outdated.
Some performances also felt off, the main voice actor for the main character sometimes sounds like he's phoning it in, thankfully most of the other cast put in a decent performance that doesn't distract you.
Weapons are also very hit and miss, where a-lot of them you don't really get a great sense of their weight or true firepower. Like how when holding a standard Assault rifle, it feels more like a P-Shooter with how little presents it has. Comparing those weapons to later laser weapons, at a certain part in the game you'll come across laser weapon ammo so much that you'll abandon conventional weapons at the drop of a hat. Now the problem here isn't that there's too much laser ammo, its the fact that later on you are coming up against different classes of Terminator, which can only be stopped with laser weapons, and the normal guns are meant for the smaller robots that attack you, which creates this sense that one class of weapons is just not worth it anymore.
The game also tries to implement a skill tree system that honestly doesn't feel all too needed. I get its meant to help you believe you are turning into the best soldier in the resistance, but I feel if they focused more on the gunplay instead of a skill tree than the game could of been improved.
Glitches wise I ran into several during my play-through. One being AI either becoming brain dead, standing still allowing me to thrash them, or somehow knowing where I was behind walls or cover they couldn't possibly see through leading to frustration as Terminators wipe the floor with you early game and having 4 pounce on you just from loading a quick save isn't the best feeling.
Overall, this game has flaws, jank and other words the thesaurus spits at me, but I have to take a knee to all of that really and congratulate Teyon for making a decent game. These guys aren't triple A studio's levels of talent, and neither do they have funding like that, so to produce a product like this is amazing to see. I only wish to see this company go bigger and better with their new Robocop game. And hopefully they can learn from their mistakes and become a household name in coming years.
