Terminator 3:
The Redemption

Ah-nuld is back in an arcade shooter that's almost fun—
but is that enough to "redeem" the franchise?

	Terminator 3: The Redemption
	Atari
	PlayStation 2
	MSRP: $49.99

Review by Matt Peckham

t's surreal, now that Arnold's the California governator, to pick up a gamepad and launch his likeness at scads of sneering cadaverous metal endoskeletons as he cracks one-liners like "Don't lose your head" and "Eat me." That's precisely what's on the menu with this late-to-market expansion of the third Terminator movie, which lets players assume the role of the be-muscled one in order to ensure the survival of humanity's saviors, John Connor and Kate Brewster.

Terminator 3: The Redemption generally follows the plot of the movie, and is not a brand-new story. In 2032, resistance fighters manage to capture a T850 model 101 terminator—the original robot-clothed-in-flesh model played by Schwarzenegger in all three films. John Connor is dead, and the future is an Ellison-esque nightmare wasteland domineered by artificially intelligent machines bent on eradicating a dwindling band of human resistance fighters. In a last-ditch ploy, resistance members reprogram the T850 and send it back in time, hoping to avert John Connor's death. At the same time, the machine intelligence running the show in the future—Skynet—sends its latest model T-X, coyly dubbed the "Terminatrix," back in time to stop the now-antiquated T850.

There are 14 missions total, and each involves some combination of third-person combat or vehicle manipulation through contemporary Los Angeles, the year 2032 and a distant alternate futurescape. Most levels blend run-and-gun stages with drive-and-fire sequences, either in pursuit of or escape from various enemies. Hand-to-hand weapons include assault rifles, shotguns, machine guns, plasma rifles and plasma missile launchers, and vehicles run the spectrum from police motorcycles and pickup trucks to large plasma-spitting machines with guns that look like twin-mounted howitzers. Movement through a level is occasionally handed off to the game AI to provide extended shooting sequences where the object is usually to destroy specific targets while fending off incoming power-draining weapons. Completing missions within certain time parameters as well as discovering secrets leads to terabyte upgrades that allow improvements to the T850's scanning and recharge systems, which in turn increase lethality of weapons systems.

He probably won't be back

Forget the illogical time-travel foolishness both the movies and this game dabble in—the main reason to play Terminator 3: The Redemption is for the sheer wild abandon of blowing as much up as fast as possible. Minutes after they hit the start button, the game thrusts players into a river of carnage as the T850 marches down linear exterior paths, storm-wracked and framed by sizzling post-apocalyptic wreckage. Most of the experience is about the visceral thrill of seeing robots go kablooey after strafing every 3-D object and texture in sight with an endless barrage of incendiary ammunition. At first it's mildly amusing, and quite easy on the eyes for a game system that's getting long in the tooth, but even fans of venerable arcade shooters like Time Crisis will probably grow weary of the tedious, repetitive gameplay by their 10th shot at some arbitrarily frustrating sequence.

In the old days, i.e., roughly a decade ago, the "shooter on rails" approach was novel enough to spawn a short-lived but popular following in arcades and, to a lesser degree, on home entertainment systems. The marriage of exceptional 3-D environments and appreciable sound samples doesn't hurt Atari's throwback bit of homage to that period, but this is still at its heart a game where the challenge is utterly reflex-driven, and against a merciless timer whose terabyte upgrade rewards are prosaic at best in both form and function. It doesn't help that the control mechanism for aiming and firing will be appreciated only by the stunningly patient, as the tendency for the crosshairs to jerk too far in any one direction with minimal amounts of pressure to the thumbstick is profoundly irritating.

Putting Terminator 3: The Redemption in context, it's easily the best of all the miserable franchise tie-ins that followed Bethesda's excellent but barely remembered Future Shock. It's also not half bad as far as shooters go, and the look and feel of the films has been translated with essential fidelity (even the actor voicing Arnold nails the thick Austrian accent and deadpan delivery). As far as the holiday competition goes, however, this is a lackluster title whose challenge lies in merely forcing the player to memorize canned level sequences, after which blowing through all 14 levels is a matter of just a few hours' work, and that's simply not worth 40 bucks, with so many superior alternatives.

This is a decent rental title for shooter fans, made slightly more attractive by a fun, albeit restricted, two-player co-op mode, and consider that—given the history of the franchise—it could have been much, much worse. — Matt

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