I'll Be Bad
Ultimately the only really meaningful choice you’ll ever have to make in Terminator: Resistance, is whether you want to keep brainlessly blasting your way through to its completion, or hop in your car, drive back to the store and try and exchange it for something better. I suggest you hold on to your receipt, because Terminator: Resistance starts out as an extremely unsatisfying shooter and never really improves over the course of its 10-hour long, single-player-only campaign.
In fact, the actual terminators don’t even show up to fight you until a couple of hours in; prior to their arrival you’re just machine gunning robot spiders and sentry drones as you tread and retread the same burnt out sections of post-apocalyptic Pasadena. Then when the skeletal cyborgs do arrive, they’re shockingly inept and underpowered; these aren’t merciless murderers that will shrug off your attacks and relentlessly pursue you like Resident Evil 2’s Mr. X, they’re just tin man terminators who haplessly march into the path of your plasma rifle’s rounds and meekly shudder into a scattered pile of spare parts. I’ve made phone calls on smarter Androids.
Terminator: Resistance also gives you noise-making gadgets to encourage a more stealth-based approach, stimulants to slow down time during shootouts, and crafting tables to manufacture your own pipe bombs and medikits. But most of this is unnecessary since the guns are so powerful, ammunition is plentiful, and the enemies are so incredibly insipid. In Terminator: Resistance’s second half you get to take on hulking mechs and the airborne Hunter-Killer drones, but despite the fact they each look appropriately imposing, both of them take a dive before you can mumble a half-hearted hasta la vista, baby.
Terminator: Resistance isn’t all bad, though. The hacking minigame that’s used to bypass doors and turn automated turrets against your enemies, resembles a monochromatic version of Frogger. And I like Frogger. So at least there’s that.