Terminator Salvation takes place before the movie, before anyone had seen T-600’s.  In coop mode you play as John Connor and Blair Williams on a mission to help fellow resistance fighters that were captured by Skynet.

Graphics

TS is a third person shooter inspired by Gears of War.  With beautiful graphics and believable animation this game had a lot going for it… too bad the controls were frustrating and it loaded slower than Crysis would on a Commador 64.  The loadscreen was a headshot of a Terminator with spinning eyes.

LOADING…

This was pretty sweet until you realize that you are going to get REALLY familiar with it.  Seriously there were several levels where the time spent loading was LONGER than the actual level… when this is the case you know you have issues.  Everytime you die you have to sit while the entire level reloads… no faster than the first time.  To add to this frustration, if you play Coop and wander a little too far away from the action or HAVE YOUR PARTNER MOVE FARTHER THROUGH THE LEVEL WITHOUT WAITING FOR YOU, it says you have left the battle and must immediately restart the level… which includes fully loading it AGAIN.  Not fun.  After staring at this for several hours you will feel like you have REALLY stepped into the future because you are now watching an episode of the incredibly popular Hypno-Toad!

GP WOOT!

I sat down with my brother and ran through the game in Coop in about five hours.  I say ran through, but it was more like sprint for ten meters then wait ten minutes then sprint.  We weren’t even planning on playing through the game, but after we finished the first level and saw the little Xbox symbol pop up and tell us that we each received 80 GP just for completing a level, we had a little incentive.  Of the five hours we spent playing the game AT LEAST an hour and a half was spent watching Hypno-Toad.  As my brother so eloquently put it, “It’s Loadtastic!”

Teamwork

There was one redeaming thing about the game;  having to work together as a team to destroy enemies.  The enemies most vulnerable spot is on their back so you find yourselves coordinating attacks so that one can flank while the other draws fire.  I really enjoyed that aspect to the game.

Basically…

Good Graphics

Good Animation

Fun Coop dynamic

Easy source of GP

Frustrating Controls

Frustrating load screens

Long load screens

load screens

load screens

loading… loading

Painful… just painful