Terminators, the lethal, humanity-annihilating robots, can’t see further than ten metres, and everything that spots you in the game will be fooled by kneeling round a corner for a little bit. Much like the rest of the game, it’s nowhere near as clever as you’d expect it to be.

They initially feel as terrifying as they should, but the decrepit stealth action soon proves to be as dated as the rest of the game, neutering the few thrills to be found here.Ī bar at the top of the screen tells you if you’ve been detected by any enemies, with the aim of promoting stealthy play, but all it does is tell you that there is an enemy somewhere nearby, further robbing the game of its atmosphere.

Skulking around the apocalyptic landscapes feels realistic enough as long as you buy into the potential danger you’re in. What Terminator: Resistance gets right is replicating the menace of the Terminators. After a while, I spent more of my time trying to see how close the lip-syncing was (answer: not very). Your little apocalyptic crew are still probably the most interesting thing here, and there are conversation options that allow you to get into their good graces – or, terrifyingly, their pants, in the most awkward video game sex scenes you’ll have seen this decade – but the writing swings from believable to GCSE English project from sentence to sentence. There’s no grand narrative here, and beyond some of the characters’ personal stories there’s very little to become emotionally involved with. The story, such as it is, skirts between boredom and being thoroughly uninteresting. Having escaped the Annihilation Line, you group up with a small bunch of survivors, with the sole aim of continuing to survive. You play Jacob Rivers, a member of the Resistance who somehow manages not to die despite being surrounded by machines that are fundamentally built to kill him. They may not look that much like real human beings, but they do at least sound like them. From the atmospheric soundtrack that builds from the iconic staccato drags of the original movie’s theme, to the relatively well-delivered voice performances, it hits the right notes.

It has just enough drama to occasionally put you on the edge of your post-apocalyptic seat, and the game’s audio is a distinct high point.

Terminator resistance review