6.22.2015

Terminator Genisys: Revolution: Quick Review

HASTA LA VISTA, BABY


     Somehow Glu Mobile, a company that prides itself on being "The Leader in Freemium Mobile Gaming" has taken everything fun and good about the old Terminator 2 Arcade Game rail shooter and made it worse so it could fit in your pocket...  for free.  Glu focused far too much on the "freemium" aspect and not nearly enough on the much more important "Terminator" part of the game.


NO FATE BUT WHAT WE MAKE

     The first step in the wrong direction comes from the CONSTANT advertising.  Even if you simply enter a menu and immediately exit there's a 70% chance you'll either receive a still shot ad or an entire game trailer popping up.  I'm not kidding- this game is flooded with advertising bombarding you with them every other minute.
     To make matters worse there is a forced need to level each of the 3 weapon types up to pass various missions to progress- heavily encouraging the use of IAPs to speed the sluggish progression due to a severe lack of resources.  Players must level a weapon up nearly every 3rd stage, requiring either IAPs or a preposterously long process of accumulating one of 3 types of currency that trickle in after hours of play.

     The next step wrong is the fact this isn't a real rail shooter, but rather a cover-based shooter making players simply go from point to stationary point.  Granted, had there been a decent difficulty balance (instead of a shallow IAP weighted grind) this may not have been such an annoyance because the short shooting levels aren't too terrible.

CHILL OUT,  DICKWAD

     I mean the controls are simple and surprisingly decent for the shooting with my only complaint about them being that the reload button is at the very top of the right side for some odd reason.  All three weapons feel different enough to merit note.  The machine gun, shotgun, and sniper rifle all actually have very notable variances and it does change how you play in these extremely brief levels.

     In the essence of fairness, I must say the graphics aren't that bad.  They aren't nearly as good as the Google Play store pictures would have you believe, but they really aren't terrible.


JUDGEMENT DAY

     That is really the deal breaker with the game- level brevity.  Players will spend far more time navigating the menus than in the actual shooting parts.  It is absolutely ridiculous that Glu released a half-assed game that was more menus and advertising than real gameplay.  Even if they simply got rid of all the damn ads, it might upgrade this title to tolerable.  As a lifelong Terminator fan, this game held very mild entertainment value for me, but for non-fans it might be too much crap to deal with.  Why they didn't just make a small 3rd person shooter is really anyone's guess.

     Contrary to its title, Terminator Genisys: Revolution is definitely not a revolution in any way possible, but truly an awful mess of a movie tie-in.  Had Terminator Genisys: Revolution been a premium game with a little more work put in, it could've been decent.  It has the rudimentary skeleton, just none of the important components that make it a true Terminator game's T-800 Endoskeleton chasis.

     The Terminator franchise desperately needs an amazing movie tie-in, but this is not it.  In fact, I think someone should send a Terminator back in time to stop them from creating this game.

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