Belated Game Review: Terminator Salvation

This review is not so belated as the game's only a month old :)

Something interesting to note with this game is that the same parent company produced both the game and the movie. You would think that the game would be much better then because they could work with the concepts that the movie side is coming up with without really having to wait until the movie is finished. However, that promise is unfulfilled much like this game. That's not to say Terminator is necessarily a BAD game, but that it could have used another month or two of development time.

You play as John Connor (naturally) and the game story takes place before the movie. In the game, John Connor is just a solidier in the resistance who is doubting his place in the world and in the army. While in the midst of a battle he gets a distress call from a team deep in Skynet territory and against orders goes to save them, picking up people along the way and learning what it means to be a leader.

The game studio was able to get every character's likeness and voice from the movie except for Christian Bale (who just happens to be the lead freakin' character). So in his place is a non-descript created lookalike who doesn't look real at all (it's always the eyes, they can never get them right).

Essentially the game consists of 2 parts, urban fighting where you are trying to find cover amongst the rubble and take out the various terminators that are sent and rail shooting, where you ride a set path and try to destroy the terminators that are chasing you.

The urban part is fairly decent, the big mechanic of the game is that while under cover, if you sneak to the edge of cover and hold the Left stick toward another piece of cover, you will get a pop up of the points you can run to. When you press X John will sprint to the next piece of cover. You can use this to get behind the enemies. The movements look really fluid and natural so that's at least one thing they did right. I would like to see that used more in other games.

You need to be able to get behind the terminators, because for a lot of them that's where the weak spot is. The AI in this game is semi decent as well because you can keep a terminator occupied and they will actually shoot it in the back. The other nice thing is that you can also play co-op if you want another person to help getting to the backside.

Rail shooting is frustrating though, there are too many machines and it's damn near impossible to center on them long enough to shoot. You will be able to make it through but it's tough.

That's realy all there is to the game. You can tell it's lacking as there's only 8 different weapons and 7 different terminators. The game can be knocked out in hard mode in 6 hours and as far as trophies go there's only 12, but they can all be gotten in 1 playthrough on hard and they are all gold.

Final Verdict: An otherwise promising game cut short by having to release on the same day as the movie. It's worth a rent, but not much more than that. I give it a 5.5/10



PS3 Trophies

Belated Game Reviews: Burnout Paradise

PS3 Trophies

I've been having issues with the ps3trophycard site, so I created an account over at Playfire which isn't blocked at work. The results of that are up at the top of the post here.

The next game in my series of overdue game reviews is Burnout Paradise, which is the 7th game in the Burnout series. This version of the game has an open world concept like Midnight Club. You can drive around at your leisure. There are 95 different events set up at intersections. When you are at one you want to start, you hit L2 + R2 and then you'll be given the parameters of the race. There are several different modes of racing:

-Race: Obviously, you are to go from Point A to Point B and come in 1st place
-Burning Route: There is one for each car you can find. All you have to do it go from Point A to Point B under a certain time. You're rewarded with an upgraded version of the car you are driving
-Road Rage: My personal favorite, you have to run a certain number of your competitors off the road in under 2 minutes (although you get +10 seconds per wreck)
-Stunt Run: Pull off chains of stunts to beat a given score
-Marked Man: Get from Point A to Point B, except everyone is trying to run you off the road. This one is frustrating because even if you are driving a truck you will still have cars run you off the road.

Additionally there are 2 scores per road to beat, the 1st is a time score. It starts when you hit the beginning of the street and ends at the end (duh). The second is a showtime score. You can hit L1+R1 to go into showtime mode where you deliberately crash into cars for points and boost, you can use the boost to propel the car down the road. It's graded on the number of cars you hit and how far you go, with buses added +1 to your multiplier.

To progress in the game you need to complete events to raise your license level up from D to Criterion Elite (SSS) [You only need to get Class S for the trophies]. Going from one license to the next will reward you with a new car and after a certain # of events you will be notified that a certain model of car is driving around. If you crash it you get to keep it. There are technically 35 cars in the game but each one has a souped up varient that you can get by winning a Burning Route

Graphically, the game is impressive (although I'd expect no less from the series) Car crashes look very realistic. There is a very nice selection of cars which are modeled on a wide variety of real cars. When you're boosting with the last car you get everything is just a blur.

Musically the game has 40 licensed tracks, with the theme being "Paradise City" by Guns n' Roses naturally. There are also another 40 previous Burnout songs and Classical Music. You might want to turn down the engine noises in the settings because even though they sound nice, they can be annoying after a while (just ask my wife).

I found the game to be extremely fun and replayable, especially because I'm not much of a racing person. It's like GTA in the sense that you can just fire up the game and drive around without worrying about the game. It's also nice because the game is still being updated (in fact the 1.9 update came out last night). Some of the DLC is free such as the motorcycle pack and Online pack. However, other's must be bought, such as the Cops and Robbers, Additional Car Packs, and Big Surf Island.

As far as trophies go, there are a shitload of them but the following apply to the main game only

37 Bronze / 10 Silver / 2 Gold / 1 Platinum

You only have to get all the original trophies for the Platinum, so when you get it your overall % will be around 47. The only hard one I found was getting all 8 people into the baseball stadium. What you can do is start your own online game and then tool around until you have 8 people (took me about 20 minutes). Then start Freeburn Challenge 2, which is for everyone to meet at the stadium and then as long as everyone participates (there are some asshats our there), then you'll get the trophy. Also 1 Bronze trophy requires a compatible USB camera for the PS3.

The Online Pack adds 4 Bronze, 1 Silver, and 1 Gold.
The Bike Pack adds 5 Bronze, 1 Silver, adn 1 Gold.
The Party Pack adds 3 Bronze and 4 Silver (USB camera needed)
The Car Packs add 4 Bronze and 4 Silver (You need all the cars pack though)
Cops and Robbers add 3 Bronze and 5 Silver
Finally, Big Surf adds 7 Bronze and 3 Silver

Wooo, that's a lot. However, it only took around 20 hours of playing to get the main trophies (although there's a lot of stuff in the game to do), the add on packs (if you choose) will keep you busy for a while)

Final Verdict: Burnout is part of Greatest Hits collection (and rightly so), so a new copy can be had for $30 and used is around $15-30. I'd say buy it used and you'll get 65 trophies easy and maybe more if you choose. If you buy all the DLC, it'll be around the price of a new game but with a lot to keep you busy.

Score 9.5 of 10