Retro Review – Terminator: Dawn Of Fate

<p>We all know that licensed games have a pretty bad rap in the gaming community&comma; especially licensed games that came before <em>Arkham Asylum<&sol;em>&period; Every now and then as I&&num;8217&semi;m flipping through some of my older titles I find a licensed game that I&&num;8217&semi;m yet to give a chance to&comma;<em> Terminator&colon; Dawn of Fate<&sol;em> was one of those titles&period; Now&comma; I love the <em>Terminator<&sol;em> series&comma; the first three entries are probably my favorite before they got all wonky&period; I figured that with Atari&&num;8217&semi;s name behind this game that it would do the series some justice and it did&comma; very little though&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>This game takes place before James Cameron&&num;8217&semi;s first foray into the <em>Terminator<&sol;em> series&comma; which means all the Sarah Connor&&num;8217&semi;s are still alive and happy&semi; for now&period; You play as Kyle Reese alongside John Connor in the far future attempting to defeat Skynet&&num;8217&semi;s evil plans&period; This time their plan involves T-800&&num;8217&semi;s being sent back into the past to change the future&period; Connor hears of this plan and takes it upon himself and Reese to stop the plot before he gets erased from history&period; You and Connor go through a series of events to stop the time displacement equipment from ever being used&period; Obviously&comma; if you&&num;8217&semi;ve ever seen the movie you see what happens and their plan was not a complete success&comma; so they had to do plan B&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<figure id&equals;"attachment&lowbar;134676" aria-describedby&equals;"caption-attachment-134676" style&equals;"width&colon; 640px" class&equals;"wp-caption aligncenter"><img class&equals;"size-full wp-image-134676" src&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cdn&period;bagogames&period;com&sol;wp-content&sol;uploads&sol;2018&sol;02&sol;09000559&sol;Terminator-Dawn-of-Fate-07&period;jpg" alt&equals;"" width&equals;"640" height&equals;"360" &sol;><figcaption id&equals;"caption-attachment-134676" class&equals;"wp-caption-text">&lpar;<em>Terminator&colon; Dawn of Fate<&sol;em> &&num;8211&semi; Atari&rpar;<&sol;figcaption><&sol;figure>&NewLine;<p>I was surprised when I found out that this game is third-person over-the-shoulder&comma; I assumed I would be playing a first-person shooter&period; Well&comma; the developers did trick me a bit there&comma; you can move around and shoot while in the third person&comma; but if you want to shoot in first person mode you must hold down the left trigger and use the left thumbstick to aim&period; X is fire in both modes&comma; B is roll when you are being inundated with robots&comma; A is melee when you run out of ammo&comma; which you will and finally Y is interact when you have to solve puzzles to escape with John&period; What made this game pretty tough and almost unbearable to me was the fact that you have no control over the camera&period; It will move as it likes and when it moves it generally isn&&num;8217&semi;t beneficial to your survival&period; I would have had so much more fun if I could have controlled the camera&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Sugar coating it will just not work&comma; so I will just out and say it&semi; this game is ugly&excl; The cut scenes look pretty decent&comma; but once you get to the campaign part of the game&comma; it gets pretty disturbing&period; I couldn&&num;8217&semi;t believe how poorly the game looks&comma; the robots all look rusty and put together with masking tape&period; The environments are poorly lit and extremely repetitive&period; If you aren&&num;8217&semi;t paying attention then you can get lost very fast&comma; plus the lousy environments make it difficult to find your objectives&period; There was one part where I needed to fire up a generator but I couldn&&num;8217&semi;t see the button to push&period; I kept running against all the walls in the room and pressing the action button to see if I could get something to click&period; When it finally did I had to find a light in the room&comma; wait for it to stop blinking then press it again&period; It wasn&&num;8217&semi;t a very fun portion of the level&comma; and those type of interactions would follow me throughout my playthrough&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<figure id&equals;"attachment&lowbar;134679" aria-describedby&equals;"caption-attachment-134679" style&equals;"width&colon; 640px" class&equals;"wp-caption aligncenter"><img class&equals;"size-full wp-image-134679" src&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;cdn&period;bagogames&period;com&sol;wp-content&sol;uploads&sol;2018&sol;02&sol;09002057&sol;termdawn&period;jpg" alt&equals;"" width&equals;"640" height&equals;"360" &sol;><figcaption id&equals;"caption-attachment-134679" class&equals;"wp-caption-text">&lpar;<em>Terminator&colon; Dawn of Fate<&sol;em> &&num;8211&semi; Atari&rpar;<&sol;figcaption><&sol;figure>&NewLine;<p>Terminator&colon; Dawn of Fate game is alright&comma; I wouldn&&num;8217&semi;t&&num;8217&semi; go out of my way to find a copy and play it from start to finish&period; I did so that I could see if my five dollars was worth it&period; It was a well spent five dollars&comma; I played a good eight hours of the game and was about to endgame content when I began to write this&period; If you&&num;8217&semi;re a fan of all things <em>Terminator<&sol;em>&comma; then I would suggest tracking this down&period; There are better third-person shooter games out there&comma; but if you want to dabble in the world that James Cameron created for us&comma; then pick this up&period; It isn&&num;8217&semi;t the best bang for your buck&comma; but this five bucks will go a long way&period; Just remember&comma; it will be ugly and some of the &&num;8220&semi;puzzles&&num;8221&semi; will be hard to see&period; If you can get past that you may enjoy your experience with this title&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&nbsp&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;