The Terminator: Future Shock

The Good
For it's time, the game had amazing graphics. It was one of the first game to actually utilize texture mapped polygon objects, leading to some really good graphics and animations, although weapons still remained sprites because at this time, the sprites still looked much better than any polygon based gun could do. The sound was very immersive, with a low haunting score playing in the background. Of course, all this was simply shadowed by the amazing mission driven gameplay with more variety than you could shake a lead pipe at. The game actually had a lot of story, and was played out through the sometimes extensive missions. The coolest aspect corresponding with the variety statement was the ability not only to traverse the decimated LA area on foot, but in a Jeep or a downed Hunter-Killer aircraft. The game was also one of the first to use the keyboard/mouse movement pattern we are all much too used to now. The game was incredibly ahead of its time.

The Bad
Well, until the patch came out, one thing in this game could be a real pain. If you were to jump into an unscalable surface, you'd slide down and die or lose almost all your health. That shouldn't have happened and it really ruined some missions for me. Also, mission 6. Mission 6 just pissed me off I spent hours trying to jump into the friggin factory. It's tricky but heres a tip for those who cant get in, you have to sideways strafe jump and change direction mid air and get in running. The graphics compared to some sprite based games still were pretty bland (games like Cybermage still well outshined it in the graphics department.

The Bottom Line
In all, if you're a fan of FPS games, Terminator games, Half-Life or any other 3d story driven game, you are doing yourselves a great injustice by NOT playing this wonderful game, if it weren't for the fact it didn't include multiplayer, I would easily consider this game one of the finest ever made. The sequel, SkyNET fixed this, and added some extras for the install of Future Shock, completing it into one large impressive package that shouldn't have been missed by anyone.