Terminator: Dawn of Fate is a pretty fair game- but it tries so hard to be a good game, but hardware and perhaps even legal considerations just kept getting in the way. Dawn of Fate tells the story of the events leading up to Kyle Resse's eventful trip back to the past to save Sarah Connor and destroy the CSM-101 Terminator sent to kill her and prevent John Connor from being born. The game is built around the standard premise of killing terminators, collecting technology for upgrades and of course, the survival of all mankind against the evil and monolithic, Skynet. You get to meet General Connor, Justin Perry and Catherine Luna- friends and comrades of Kyle's and you switch characters between missions.
It's odd that they managed to capture the look of post Judgment Day Earth, the battlefields and ruined cities perfectly. Everything Skynet had- all the vehicles- the H/K tanks and aerial units are all there in gleaming chrome, but that's all they captured. The sounds are all wrong. The brilliant purple plasma guns sound like typical game fair and don't have their deep, resonant stutter from the movies. Even the H/Ks don't sound quite right. It's like whichever studio owns the copyright approved using the appearance of everything, but said they couldn't use the sound effects. Either than or the developers decided to do their own. Bad mistake. Another flaw is that the Tech/Com soldiers and their weapons aren't really representative of the movies, either.
All I can say about the character models is BAD. Kyle Reese looks like Christopher Walken did as the Hessian in Sleepy Hollow, stupid hair and all. Justin Perry looks like he was carved out of stone and I won't go into how unfeminine Luna looks. Connor is probably the best rendered of the lot.
Mission play is broken up into 3rd person play, starting with protecting Connor from an terminator infiltration attack, destroying Tech/Com's computers and blowing up an H/K tank that has rolled into the top floor of the resistance's hideout. In that mission you have to protect a demolitions expert as he plants explosive charges in the massive hotel base, is a royal pain, because he does nothing to defend himself. Instead, he stands there passively getting blasted by terminators while you rush around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to kill them before they grease him. Later missions involve a secondary story that the programmers must have felt was pretty clever. They're wrong. As well you must prevent Skynet from steeling all the platinum from a Federal Reserve bank.
Apparently Skynet has just perfected the CSM-101 series infiltrators, but they have also been capturing normal humans and modifying them cybernetic mind control devices. One of these, Alexander Stone, blames Kyle for the death of his brother Gabriel and so has turned traitor, joining forces with Skynet in order to seek revenge. It is he the player must track down because he has stolen Connor's battle plans for an assault against Skynet's main base at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. But while you get the plans back, you can never actually kill Stone. I'm not entirely sure why Skynet would create these hybrids- dressed as they are in black and red leather with cybernetic implants visible on them, it's not like they can blend in like the infiltrator terminators do.
Finally it's the main assault on Cheyenne Mountain and you fight your way into the very core of the enemy's main base- blowing up everything in site. The hardest part being the attack on the central computer AI- the heart of Skynet which is apparently SO powerful that it is capable of mind control, a process that takes a few minutes while you work feverishly to cut off the computer's power source before it melts your guy's brain, thus ending the game.
So it's a pretty standard story line, except for the silliness of the hybrid part. There are plenty of weapons- grenades, rockets, plasma guns, machine guns, EMP weapons that stun robots for a few seconds- pretty basic stuff. The game offers a first person view, but as with any first-person console game, control is terrible and you're better off not using it except to look around at the scenery. One interesting function is Adrenaline- a function that makes you shoot faster and more accurately which enables you to take down baddies quicker than usual. It doesn't last long so it's best used wisely. Another problem is the Dino Crisis effect- opening doors just to get to another small area to open another door in order to get to another small area and, you guessed it, open another door. It gets old very fast.
While there are good concepts here, some nice graphics, the game almost seems crippled in places. Heck, you can't even walk off a ledge and kill yourself because the game won't allow it. But for the most part it seems to be a half-baked attempt to tell the same story that Bethesda Software did a decade ago with `Terminator: 2029', a somewhat more entertaining game, if graphically inferior. Dawn of Fate manages to tell a fair story with repetitive game play- go there, do that, kill this- if you've played Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, you'll know what to expect. I'd be interested to see the Xbox version just to check if it at least has better graphics.
Terminator: Dawn of Fate is a pretty fair game- but it tries so hard to be a good game, but hardware and perhaps even legal considerations just kept getting in the way. Dawn of Fate tells the story of the events leading up to Kyle Resse's eventful trip back to the past to save Sarah Connor and destroy the CSM-101 Terminator sent to kill her and prevent John Connor from being born. The game is built around the standard premise of killing terminators, collecting technology for upgrades and of course, the survival of all mankind against the evil and monolithic, Skynet. You get to meet General Connor, Justin Perry and Catherine Luna- friends and comrades of Kyle's and you switch characters between missions. It's odd that they managed to capture the look of post Judgment Day Earth, the battlefields and ruined cities perfectly. Everything Skynet had- all the vehicles- the H/K tanks and aerial units are all there in gleaming chrome, but that's all they captured. The sounds are all wrong. The brilliant purple plasma guns sound like typical game fair and don't have their deep, resonant stutter from the movies. Even the H/Ks don't sound quite right. It's like whichever studio owns the copyright approved using the appearance of everything, but said they couldn't use the sound effects. Either than or the developers decided to do their own. Bad mistake. Another flaw is that the Tech/Com soldiers and their weapons aren't really representative of the movies, either. All I can say about the character models is BAD. Kyle Reese looks like Christopher Walken did as the Hessian in Sleepy Hollow, stupid hair and all. Justin Perry looks like he was carved out of stone and I won't go into how unfeminine Luna looks. Connor is probably the best rendered of the lot. Mission play is broken up into 3rd person play, starting with protecting Connor from an terminator infiltration attack, destroying Tech/Com's computers and blowing up an H/K tank that has rolled into the top floor of the resistance's hideout. In that mission you have to protect a demolitions expert as he plants explosive charges in the massive hotel base, is a royal pain, because he does nothing to defend himself. Instead, he stands there passively getting blasted by terminators while you rush around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to kill them before they grease him. Later missions involve a secondary story that the programmers must have felt was pretty clever. They're wrong. As well you must prevent Skynet from steeling all the platinum from a Federal Reserve bank. Apparently Skynet has just perfected the CSM-101 series infiltrators, but they have also been capturing normal humans and modifying them cybernetic mind control devices. One of these, Alexander Stone, blames Kyle for the death of his brother Gabriel and so has turned traitor, joining forces with Skynet in order to seek revenge. It is he the player must track down because he has stolen Connor's battle plans for an assault against Skynet's main base at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. But while you get the plans back, you can never actually kill Stone. I'm not entirely sure why Skynet would create these hybrids- dressed as they are in black and red leather with cybernetic implants visible on them, it's not like they can blend in like the infiltrator terminators do. Finally it's the main assault on Cheyenne Mountain and you fight your way into the very core of the enemy's main base- blowing up everything in site. The hardest part being the attack on the central computer AI- the heart of Skynet which is apparently SO powerful that it is capable of mind control, a process that takes a few minutes while you work feverishly to cut off the computer's power source before it melts your guy's brain, thus ending the game. So it's a pretty standard story line, except for the silliness of the hybrid part. There are plenty of weapons- grenades, rockets, plasma guns, machine guns, EMP weapons that stun robots for a few seconds- pretty basic stuff. The game offers a first person view, but as with any first-person console game, control is terrible and you're better off not using it except to look around at the scenery. One interesting function is Adrenaline- a function that makes you shoot faster and more accurately which enables you to take down baddies quicker than usual. It doesn't last long so it's best used wisely. Another problem is the Dino Crisis effect- opening doors just to get to another small area to open another door in order to get to another small area and, you guessed it, open another door. It gets old very fast. While there are good concepts here, some nice graphics, the game almost seems crippled in places. Heck, you can't even walk off a ledge and kill yourself because the game won't allow it. But for the most part it seems to be a half-baked attempt to tell the same story that Bethesda Software did a decade ago with `Terminator: 2029', a somewhat more entertaining game, if graphically inferior. Dawn of Fate manages to tell a fair story with repetitive game play- go there, do that, kill this- if you've played Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, you'll know what to expect. I'd be interested to see the Xbox version just to check if it at least has better graphics.