Let’s finally go back to the reviews. My latest The Terminator/T2 Merch is the upgraded, so called Enhanced version of the excellent Terminator: Resistance game which I reviewed back in '19 HERE. While I got the original game days before its release, I got the Enhanced PS5 version with DLC just now, about 2 years after its release. Why the delay? Well, I didn’t have PS5! And since I’m not and never was a gamer, there was no way I would be getting a PS5. Fortunately, my son got one and I could now come back to the amazing world created in Terminator: Resistance game. I jumped right into the Annihilation Line DLC, which is so expansive and big it’s like a new separate game. I gotta say, while I praised the game so much before, this DLC outdoes the original and every other Terminator game ever made, aside from perhaps the classic T2 Arcade. While I would give the main story gameplay a solid 8/10, this DLC is indeed 10/10. It's perfect, and it’s a horror version. The original was a mix of mostly detective work/scavenging and action, with some horror mixed in. It had about two levels that were horror, such as Hospital and downtown LA at night, but it was mostly adventure/exploring story. Well, here in DLC Annihilation Line, this is almost all straight up horror. The original took place about 70% in daytime, involved going back to Resistance base after levels, meeting new groups, taking part in large military actions. Not here. You and only three others venture far away from any bases and settlements into the dark territories long abandoned by humanity, places that are equivalent of haunted houses. There are almost no daytime scenes other than one short dusk quest and one ambush level. And even though you arrived with three others, you're mostly on your own in eerie abandoned ruins of a city. A moody darkness, backlit landscape is enhanced by spooky howl of wind, creaking sounds and a chilly horror background music done in a synthesizer style of the original film, with a T-1000 theme thrown in occasionally. The story itself is eerie, since you're basically isolated with three others far from any remnants of people or hidden bases, investigating a secret settlement that went silent. As you arrive and find the place abandoned, the spooky mystery deepens.
(Some screenshots from various youtubers, see the watermarks where applied for credit). The gameplay incorporates some frightening moments. At some point you hear a child's voice crying for help in a ruined basement of a building but you know something is off. It appears to be a recording to lure you in by an old 600 model still waiting there decades later.
As another example, at one point you're on a higher floor of a crumbled building exploring its corners and dark hallways when you get a message that T-800s just entered your building and are about to walk up! The stinging horror music make that moment.
In one level, you sneak around in a cemetery hiding behind gravestones, with HK flying by and Terminators hunting around. Some waiting inside the old musoleums.
Terminators in this game are the stuff of nightmares. Theyre gleaming, dark skeletons reflecting the pale moonlight, piercing the near monochromatoc darkness with creepy red eyes. Great lighting and look
And as in the original, there are plenty of really cool references to the 2 films.
While the original was mass of fun and still a second best Terminator game ever made, I wasn't too crazy about giving the main character Jacob Rivers such importance, and wasn’t too thrilled about inclusion of the additional time travel. And there were some levels that weren’t as good as the others. But here, every level is golden, other than one action level when you're escaping an ambush. And while the original only had John Connor at the end as the only character from the films, here you're pretty much the only character not from the films. Your companion is Michael Biehn’s Kyle Reese himself, his sapper partner Ferro (which appeared in Reese’s flashbacks in the first film), and the human appearance template for the Bunker Terminator from another one of Reese’s flashbacks - a resistance soldier named Evans, who is modelled after Franco Columbu.
I’m not a gamer, never was, and gaming itself isn’t really appealing to me at all, unless I’m lured by the possibility of playing/exploring some of my favorite cinematic worlds. That’s why the only games I played (not counting Nintendo games back in the 90s, from which I favored ones based on films as well), are Star Wars Battlefront II, Alien: Isolation and Terminator: Resistance. So I can’t talk about game play from a gameplayer perspective, and how it compares to what’s out there, but all I can say as a Terminator fan this is the best gaming experience I could ever hope for and I love, absolutely love the atmosphere, the feel and look of that DLC, and enjoy its eerie mystery. Standing ovation
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