Terminator: Resistance (2019) – What Happened to This Video Game?
The video game review timeline has been temporarily saved here at JoBlo, and I couldn’t be happier. We have to go back in time slightly though to attempt to keep it that way and stop Skynet from obliterating the possibility of future looks at other games. We are tasked with going back in time to 2019 and seeing how a game that hit just months before COVID, in a series that has had dozens of games with only a few of them good, and done by a studio that bought the rights in 2013 but somehow screwed up a different franchise to release one of the absolute worst games based on a movie ever. We are looking to jump from old Detroit in a borderline apocalyptic setting to future Los Angeles in an even more apocalyptic setting and piece together the facts and ingredients to find out how this game turned out so good. Keep your robot sniffing dogs close to you as we find out what happened to Terminator: Resistance.
Games based on The Terminator were floated around as far back as 35 years ago. Kinda shocking considering the booming home PC markets that existed in the 80s not to mention the absolute trash that would be shoveled onto the likes of Atari. Even when production did begin in earnest on the IP, it didn’t come to fruition right away. 1988 saw a Danish company called Robtek get the license for the at the time only one film franchise but the whole company folded shortly after. Sunsoft, a popular company in the late 80s and early 90s who also released the best Gremlins game, would have a great looking game following Kyle Reese in the future but had to change it to a generic sci-fi shooter called Journey to Silius.
The franchise would get its first real shot at gamers in 1991 with the too ambitious for its time The Terminator by Bethesda. I looked at a ton of the games based on this franchise before so please go check out those videos for further context. Many companies on many systems would release games based on the series through the years including arcade staples, team ups with RoboCop, and some truly awful 16-bit entries. In 2019, we would get the currently final film entry in the series with Dark Fate and that would of course bring with it a ton of interest and opportunities for marketing. While the Terminator would appear in Mortal Kombat as a playable character and also pair up with Sarah Connor to be playable in Gears of War 5, it would be a seemingly unrelated game that would have the longest lasting legacy.
While many of the games associated with the franchise are directly tied into the movies, there are a handful of exceptions. Dark Fate would get three games based on it including a mobile game, a VR game, and an RTS game, but Terminator: Resistance, originally called Terminators: The Video Game when it was conceived and the rights were purchased back in 2013. The game came out to little fanfare in Europe first in November of 2019 just after its September 2019 announcement before hitting the US in early January of 2020. The lack of fanfare was warranted as this looked like a cheap IP cash in and the developer Teyon had only really done basic kid’s games or even shovel ware titles before with one exception. That exception was Rambo: The Video Game from 2014 which is widely seen as one of the worst games of all time and certainly one of the bottom of the barrel tie in games.
Would Terminator: Resistance suffer the same fate and be an on rails shooter with terrible enemy AI? Thankfully not, Skynet must have intervened in this one because what we were delivered was one of the finest Terminator games available.
Teyon went rogue here and decided to just follow a generic soldier who we have never seen or heard of in the timeline before. Instead of having him tangentially related to one of the movie’s stories like weaving in one of the first few movies, the entirety of the game takes place in the future war setting of 2028 in the Los Angeles area. While adult John Connor and Kyle Reese do make appearances, that’s fine as John is the leader of the resistance and Kyle is one of his best soldiers, so this doesn’t feel too shoehorned into things. It is much cooler that we get to play as an original character than follow the story of people we already know the outcomes of. There are some future and alternate timeline shenanigans to be had but really, would it be a terminator game if there wasn’t? Let’s pretend this game is a reprogrammed T-800 and give it some orders, shall we?
The first order is that it must LOOK like Terminator. How does the game fare there? The game opens in a first person view during a battle in war-torn future Los Angeles. A guy wearing dirty clothes asks you about the resistance before a T-820 grabs him and shoots him with a plasma rifle. Your character Jacob then runs through the ruins of Pasadena trying to escape threats while also collecting supplies and weapons. You come across other survivors as well as other threats like spider scouts, drones, and armored spiders. While most of these either don’t exist in the movie franchise or are barely seen, they look like they fit right in, and a game has to game in order to be playable and get your money’s worth. The plasma shots that fill the air, the red eyes of the T-800s, and all the destroyed buildings look great. The weapons, particularly the shotgun and the plasma weapons, feel right at home and even pay homage to the source material with the shotgun looking like the Kyle Reese Special and the plasma weapons being straight out of the future scenes that take place in the movies.
While the graphics look a little wonky at times for the human characters, the cold steel of the Skynet army do not disappoint. You also get a special vision that allows you to spot the enemy through walls that feels like it could have been in the movie. Large cannons or buildings in the distance all look like they belong in the film franchise while the uniforms of the resistance fighters and even the robot sniffing dogs, they use to stand guard all do their part to immerse you further into the lore and history. The best thing the game does visually is give you a start up screen with a half-destroyed Terminator that could be Arnold (it’s not) followed by the glowing red eyes of a T-800 that stares into your soul and dares you to begin. The environments are great too from the cold and hollow Skynet structures to the destroyed buildings and resistance bases found later. Everything about Terminator: Resistance nails the look of the franchise we all know and love while also adding enough original elements that stand out in the right ways.
The next order is that the game must SOUND like Terminator. This is even more striking than the visual piece. First off, let me make a correction to the RoboCop game. I wasn’t playing it on mute and when I went back in to get some of the last trophies, I absolutely noticed the music. I appreciate the call out in the comments, and I think I was just so immersed in being Alex Murphy that I didn’t pick up on the tunes. Anyway, back to the other cool killing machines, the music here doesn’t just pay homage or is a rearranged version, you get the full pulse pounding terminator score first on the opening screen but also after the main character explains to the uninitiated what happened to get us to the future we see. It’s great and makes you absolutely psyched to pop into this world and explore. While not all the music is just piped in directly from the film, the new score selections are the perfect mix of pulse pounding during the action scenes and eerily creepy during the times you need to stay quiet and hidden.
The music gives you some nostalgic feels when it hits the right notes but it’s not as consistent as the sound design. The sound of the bullets hitting metal, plasma shots firing and connecting, and my personal favorite, the sound of the T-800s walking around all fill the atmosphere with a sense of something you’ve seen before but always wanted to be a part of. The rich quality and deserved attention given to the arrangement and precise use of the sound is maybe the most important part of the game. It can look and even feel like a Terminator but if the sound is off then it’s going to fail. All of the choices and selections were made by people that really love the original works, and it comes through splendidly in the final product.
Finally, we need this bad boy to FEEL like a Terminator. The more game-y aspects of the game are necessary. You can level up your stats and perks just like the RoboCop game, but it works and really just gives you access to more parts of the game. The guns work like they should with bullets being able to take down the smaller enemies but only plasma or explosive weapons working on the T-800s and above. Playing as a non-universe binding player character works and even though the missions largely feel the same, there is enough variety in the side missions as well as entertainment in the firefights that keep the game from becoming stale. You can pick locks like the developers were auditioning for a Fallout game as well us upgrade your weapons and find crafting or trading items strewn throughout the vast quasi-open world. There are little story bits scattered throughout the game found in notes or diaries that make the universe more lived in and all the characters, while feeling a bit stock at times, also fit into the narrative and universe fine.
Probably my favorite part of how the game feels is just how dangerous the T-800s are. They can’t be killed with bullet weapons and if you encounter more than 2 at a time, it is terrifying. Their plasma weapons will shred you and having to sneak by them when you are outnumbered in a cramped indoor space is a thrill on par with any horror game. You even get a bonus section where you play as an infiltrator Terminator. Not only do you see through their red tinted vision with white letter descriptors, but you get to be on an absolute power trip as you decimate resistance forces throughout the section. While it’s more fun to fight against Skynet there is something to be said about stepping into the skull crushing metal feet of a Terminator in a video game setting.
Terminator: Resistance isn’t just the best Terminator game out there, the developers continued to improve it over the 5 plus years it’s been out. They added modes and fixed bugs and even released a story DLC that is just more of this great game at a reasonable price. This and RoboCop are examples of how to do licensed games justice, and I highly recommend you get both these Teyon treasures on the gaming platform of your choosing. Don’t resist this hell of a good time. I know I’ll be back!
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