Xbox

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is a shoddy game that could have been something. This game has a very rushed feeling to it. The controls are not perfected, the aiming is way off, the AI is a push over, and the mission structure is laughable. If the developers gave this game a little more time to work out some of these issues they would have had a good game on their hands, instead we have this game. Only get this game if you are a die-hard Terminator fan and have to have everything related to this series.

T3 was definitely a game with high expectations towards it. After a hit movie had just been released, the developers knew that they would need to top it in quality. Sadly, this game just fails to top the movie. However, for fans of the Terminator, this will probably be a game that you still want to check out. The extra features are another reason to rent this game and, if you're really into it, buy it. While it didn't manage to top the movie, T3 is still a game which is worthy of attention.

What it comes down to is, if you’re a big fan of the Terminator films, and especially the latest one, then there is enough here to keep you entertained for a couple of days. If you aren’t then there isn’t enough here to keep you entertained for more than a few hours.

I doubt even hard core fans of the Terminator movies will like this game. I know, because I'm one. The movies should have stopped at number two, and the games should have stopped after that first Super Nintendo title. Here's to hoping this game doesn't give rise to any sequels.

Rise of the Machines is endowed with numerous glitches and flaws. The first-person shooter engine has horrendous hit detection. Many times, you'll have a target locked on to an enemy and your shots will pass straight through them. Enemy fire also goes through walls, which leads to many instances of getting shot by enemies you can't see.

I love how Atari included several additional extras to entice the gamer to play more of the adventure. The only thing wrong with that is the adventure itself. T3 Rise of the Machines the game is a very linear action title that tries a lot of concepts but it excels well at none of them. The first person shooter aspect is nothing amazing, the story drags on and on, plus these fighting scenes are just pathetic. I finally realize why the machines want to kill off all the humans after seeing games like this.

The game Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines adds another videogame to the Terminator universe, but that surely isn’t saying much considering the final product. Diehard fans of the series might want to play it to simply see the scenes before the movie, but it isn't recommended. Boring and sub-par gameplay, combined with bland visuals and sounds, creates a gaming experience that should be missed. More time was needed fine tuning things such as game mechanics, visuals, and audio. Instead, a title was pushed out the door to release along side with the T3 DVD. Fans are better off renting the trilogy on DVD and moving past this game.

It is very worthy of how they somewhat managed to make this into a continuation of the movie, but this is not a groundbreaking title, nor a blockbuster hit. There is a little more to value about the movie as they added in some new ideas. The cut scenes are nice to look at, but you'll probably only play through this game once. There are a lot of movie extra's on the game disc that will keep your interest for a little while.

It should come as no surprise that when you start with a poor film, add on a terrible FPS game engine, and then blow your budget on a lead actor at the expense of anything that resembles a fun or challenging game, that you have all the ingredients for a colossal failure. Rise of the Machines isn’t the worst Xbox game I’ve every played but it’s in the bottom ten.

Terminator 3 : Le Soulèvement Des Machines, est l'archétype du jeu garantissant une ambiance extrêmement immersive, mais retournant la situation à son désavantage, par l'accumulation de lacunes dont il fait les frais. Il n'en demeure pas moins que ce titre à l'intérêt limité, n'offre pas assez de prises à votre imagination ou à votre détermination pour espérer se détacher du petit monde des FPS. Et ce n'est pas son moteur vaguement inspiré de celui de Red Faction, qui parviendra à le sauver. Transmission terminée.

Despite the fact that four different development teams worked on various aspects of Terminator 3, the game, as a whole, still feels completely slapdash and thrown-together. None of its gameplay components come together in any kind of an interesting way to make the game the least bit entertaining to play, and the muddy visuals, mediocre audio, and largely absent plot just don't make Terminator 3 anything worth recommending in the slightest.

I could sum up my review in this summary section, but instead, I'd like to grouse about the credit list for this game. One, because it's consoling in how funny it is to me, and two, because it's shocking how many people were involved in this hurried production. The in-game credit scrawl lasts, at estimate, 12 minutes. It plays the signature T2 end theme -- the same tune used to play over a half-million ILM employees in the movie -- a total of five looped times. Big companies like Shiny and Humongous, two outfits with enough of their own work on their plates to get involved here, are listed here as somehow being roped into this production. Heck, the list was so long, I checked to see if maybe I was on it.

T3: Rise of the Machines seems to be the most disappointing game of the year in my eyes. Being a big fan of the Terminator movie series I was really hoping to have a good interpretation of the movie into the game but unfortunately there is nothing but bad to be found in the game. Unless you have to rent this because of the title, I would just stay away from this one it’s not worth the money or the time.

This game is so bad that even Terminator completists would have a hard time justifying this purchase, for the rest of us it simply becomes another horrible waste of a potentially great movie licence, and a low-end benchmark for Xbox first person shooters. Avoid. Shun. Keep away from. Steer clear of. Refrain from. Eschew. Abstain...

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines isn’t the world’s ugliest game, but it sure isn’t showing off any cutting-edge graphics. Everything has a dark "smudgy" look to it; just bland and plain. The explosions and lighting effects are seriously sub-par when compared to other recent titles. The smoke and particle effects look just plain awful. Character models are incredibly stiff and the animations are some of the worse I’ve seen in a long time. It seems to me that the horrible gameplay was thrown in just to fill in the open time between the cut-scenes.

This game reeks of what has brought him all the way to leadership of the Fifth Largest Economy in the World: so much presentation and bulked up features, with nothing of substance underneath. One can only hope that people will not elect to purchase this title, as they'll find themselves duped again by this country's best salesman.

But there is one nice thing that can be said about the game. In the special features section of the disk, there's a demo of the upcoming game Terminator: Redemption, a third-person shooter that includes driveable vehicles and decent graphics. While the controls are still rough, and even though it offers tragic framerate issues, this 10-minute demo is far more playable and entertaining than the entire game Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. The demo is good enough, in fact, that it caused me to question the wisdom of including it on the disc, as it makes Terminator 3 look that much worse by comparison. I mean, if they had a game this potentially good in the pipeline, why release Rise of the Machines at all, when the only effect it could have is to alienate your audience and make them question the viability of the franchise?

Everything about the game indicates that some marketing exec was behind the scenes saying, "This game has got to launch with the movie DVD whether it is ready or not." Yep, and they paid for it: T3:ROTM is bad looking, worse sounding, poor playing and bug-ridden. In the end analysis, buy the DVD and enjoy the movie - leave the game on the shelf.

But the saddest part has to be the staggering number of people who worked on this thing, including some well-respected developers. Just check the credits from the manual. I'm not counting them all, but that's about 400 names. I imagine one of these people, just one, went up to their manager and said, This is a bad game. It would be embarrassing if we sold it to people. I'm sure they were immediately fired. If it had been my name in those credits, I would have changed it to Alan Smithee.