Gaming Target - Xbox: Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines

Written by Ryan Smotherman on December 17, 2003

Full Review: Yay! Judgment day!

Before he was Governor of the state of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger was actually a movie star at one time. Arnold's biggest films are of course the Terminator trilogy and even his Terminator 3 flick did ok at the box office in 2003. Atari and Black Ops are ready to deliver on Terminator 3 the video game, a first person shooter where you fight to save the future from a deadly new Terminator. Sadly as a game, Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines is not very good.

I still haven't seen T3 the movie in theatres or on DVD so I didn't really know the storyline going into this. I do know that John Connor is suppose to be the leader of a resistance movement in the future and Skynet is sending deadly Terminator robots to the past to kill him. The game begins as a twenty something John Connor waits for the infamous Judgment Day where the machines take over the world but since these Skynet machines were destroyed ten years ago (in Terminator 2) nothing seems to happen. Everything seems fine until the game cuts away to the year 2029 where the machines are still in full control. In a last ditch effort to save the human race, a woman by the name of Kate reprograms a T-101 (Arnold) to protect the resistance and most importantly protect John Connor from the T-X, a female Terminator. If you're new to the Terminator series, the game's story will not make a lot of sense.

The first thing I noticed right away about T3 the game that it was loaded with tons of special features. You can see cool stuff like СMaking of the T3game', movie clips, a playable demo of T3 Redemption, and you can even see a shameless but fun to watch trailer for the T3 DVD. Easily the coolest set of extras however would have to be the secret games. Since Atari is the publisher here they were kind enough to include the mega hits Centipede and Missile Command: two arcade legends from the 1980's. Missile Command was actually featured in the second Terminator movie if you look in the background plus its post-apocalypse theme fits this game perfectly, eh? These games and much of the other bonus material need to be unlocked first so you have to play the main game to get the good stuff.

Moving on to the game itself, just imagine a shooter like Halo or Metroid Prime but not even remotely as good and you get T3 here. The First Person view and controls do take some getting to but some of set ups can be customized if you want your buttons in a certain way so it's not all bad. From time to time the game will shift into a very ugly fight mode where you fight other Terminators in jerky one on one battles.

Despite all the people working on this big budget project, the game looks below average at best. It doesn't really matter which stage I'm at, the game always seems to have horrible looking textures and repetitive designs. Fans of the Enter the Matrix should recognize this ugly in-game engine right off the bat although that game ran at a higher frame-rate. The sound fairs much better because many of the stars from the movie including Arnold even lend their voices to the game.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Full Review: Yay! Judgment day!