Terminator: Future Shock - PC/DOS

T-800 is going to shoot you in the face, from an FMV

The first game to use the XnGine from Bethesda Softworks back in 1995 before later being used to develop Daggerfall and further TES games before Morrowind plumped for a better engine, but you can see the work being laid down in this game and the direction it started to take gaming.

He's not joking, he's dying but won't until you actually begin the mission.

Future Shock takes the Terminator franchise and gives us a 3D world in which to explore level by level, as we develop from a general runaway in the future from murderous robots into a fighter with the resistance to the greatly exalted SAVIOUR OF EVERYTHING! Yes the game does escalate your achievements quickly towards the end but justifiably so. As said, you start off as someone that escapes a disposal camp and while being chased down, is rescued by a resistance fighter that gets killed in the process. Upon talking to the dying man, you're given the objective to get back to the resistance and alert John Connor. From there it all goes mad.

A little exploration will net you stronger weapons than you'd usually find.

The first thing that grabs you when you start to play is that the levels are huge, especially considering at the time that the usual game was ranging from Doom, to Duke Nukem, to Quake with significantly smaller (but also more involving) levels. Here we have the first level can take players around 30 minutes to complete if they get involved in the exploration incentive of the layout. Wandering the nuclear wasteland of post-apocalyptica lets you head into derelict buildings and ransack them but with the added details you tend to find the untold stories of families murdered in their homes but the machines and left to rot, while other places show signs of damage and destruction and few skeletons huddled together in one of the bedrooms, the detail is surprising and bleak.

Yep, it's the map. Yep, it's a little complicated but moves in fluid 3D.

That's the beauty of Future Shock, you can explore the entire map and find weapon caches with access to a rocket launcher on the first level IF and ONLY IF, you find and locate them and that alone can take some serious levels of exploring to achieve. The rocket launcher for example is found in a laser-fenced off area, atop a building that you can leap to if you have the health to survive but after jumping over or around a human-sized blending machine. Later weapons are even more difficult to find.

Certainly a bleak outlook.

The story however, unfolds steadily in cut-scenes and in small snippets received during play. As such it delves into the idea behind time manipulation, branching into theories of quantum mechanics and deploys various gaming tricks to involve the ideas into more than just back ground plot. The key focus is the idea that the main bad guy, SkyNET is capable of sending itself information into the past to alert itself of key and critical points in time. As such, it can send more and more robots your way, resulting in time based teleportation of robots appearing in front of you when we switch one timeline for another. More impressively is the design of some levels to mimic déjà vu and repeats key components of the levels to repeat themselves which leaves the player genuinely wondering if they're actually lost or being subjected to the time dilation issue mentioned within the game.

Flying missions and personalised messages!

As you progress, the game throws out bigger and more powerful robots until you're faced with floating/flying monstrosities that can shred you instantly (and the first time you meet THESE is when your back is turned to them) as well as a hovering uprightly little tank with a laser gun and TWIN ROCKET PODS of which you will NEVER HEAR IT COMING. You will learn quickly to hate this little fucker. On top of that you'll come up against the less subtle robots like the HKs and the Goliaths which are based straight on the large tank looking robot from the first film "The Terminator" that was fought in a flashback-of-the-future and generally is the game's bullet sponge for draining ammo and giving back nothing in return.

Ho, Ho, Ho, now I have a machine gun.

Weaponry is fairly varied though limited at the same time. Machine gun, Assault Rifle and Uzi use the same ammo and jump pump out more at a time. The shotgun is fairly standard, reliable but slow. Grenade launcher has no reticule thanks to gravity affliction. Rockets are powerful but so rare and valuable you'd not feel up to using it, laser rifle and laser cannon eat through ammo too quickly and plasma weapons are too slow to cause significant damage at a sufficiently fast pace. However, throwables like Molotovs, pipe bombs, grenades, canisters (ow) and the satchel charges (missions only and be CAREFUL WHERE YOU USE IT!) give a little extra to play with while battling the robots.

A steady mix of on-foot, driving and flying missions to battle through.

But you won't be fighting the robots for the most part. Instead you'll be fighting the scripting within the game engine. The biggest problem with the game is that unless you do the right thing at the right time, you'll not be able to progress. For example, and it may seem obvious at the time I say this, but in the third level if you venture into the processing point for human captives, you'll be trapped. It seems obvious but at the same time this is a game that has encouraged wanton exploration and now punishes you HEAVILY if you venture in and more so if you save because that means you're starting over from the beginning. Later missions have the issue of making sure you hit the right button at the right time in the right order otherwise you're sunk and not going any further in the game's progression and there's NO real clue as to the order required until you realise you're stuck and not going to be making it home to see little Timmy for Xmas.

Whether an oversight or intention, be careful here as you too can end up trapped like the others and doomed forever.

The game has quite the level of emersion if you let it take you and can really sell itself on the "end of the world" situation and how it plays but if you hit one of this sticking points that disrupts your game entirely then reality is brought crashing back with such a suddenness that you'll find it harder to get back into the game. Aside from that, if you can stomach the bugs, you'll find an impressive game to enjoy.

Terminator: SkyNET - PC/DOS

T-800 is going to shoot you in the FACE!

The Terminator franchise has a lot going for it and sadly not a lot really been done all that well with it, arguably beyond the second film. The potential to have stories of multiple Terminators being sent back and forth to fight and protect various people has been played around with by the comic books and the films mash up a few things here and there that the TV series ignores and acknowledges in multiple incongruous ways. Terminator SkyNET, is the follow up to the original Terminator Future Shock (Of which I'll likely review next week).

Unlike the films, the shotgun is rather effective.

The idea is simple (ish...) enough, it's set after the wars, after the first two films and based in the future where you, Captain McNoFace and Generic Hero WITH a voice (little off-putting actually) are already in the Resistance and fighting alongside John Connor, Saviour of the Human Race from deadly robots. It pays a level of homage to the source material which makes slightly more sense with that context. Rather than pumping humans and robots back through time, this game deals with having to confront the eponymous SkyNET and stop one of its plans.

Battling robots amongst skeletons of old buildings.

You start with a selection of nice weapons from the start including grenades, pipe bombs, an Uzi, Assault Rifle, Shotgun and Plasma Rifle with slight zoom scope based on the first film. (This actually was ground breaking in that you began the game with more than Sweet Fuck All but more about that later). You're tasked with running into a robot compound filled with murderous robots that aren't too happy that you're alive and fleshy and will try to make you relatively unfleshy as soon as possible. It's here that you do a bit of snooping around with all the subtlety of a suicide bomber. Upon which you find the super secret weapon... A nuke.

Found it? Wasn't exactly well hidden now was it?

For those that don't know, nukes caused all this devastation in the first place and the super weapon is to use the same weapon again. So for a computer that can calculate how to traverse time and space, seems someone left the Read-Only option on for the "Learning Lessons" section of the AI. Either way, it's your mission soon to investigate which nuke this is (Like it matters?), find out how and where to disable it if possible, attempt to take it out and finally get yourself to where it is and disable it in a series of 8 or so missions. This will also involve driving cars around and flying one of the Hunter Killer machines to get this done.

There's quite a variety of Terminators in the game.

Terminator SkyNET uses and slightly improves upon the previous engine of the game with a little extra in the physics department (Bouncing grenades) and manages to also negate issues like game flags not triggering where multiple options are not performed in EXACTLY the right way and time. As such the missions in this game aren't exactly that difficult or taxing beyond "Find place, hit button, run for it" though some of the layouts require taking a BIG leap of faith (Looking at you level 3... and your bullshit building jumping madness) and some are just a straightforward slog through the environment.

Bigger guns please!

Given the time and capacity of the engine, SkyNET makes a very good go at giving a real sense of doom and gloom with the game's graphics and appearance. Locations look destroyed and the inclusion of pockets of radiation do take away any real sense of accomplishment in that if you win or lose, this planet is still looking like a Scorched Earth situation. Buildings can be entered to scavenge for supplies but will require a loading screen that takes the edge off the immersion a little while derelicts can be trawled through to find dead soldier's supplies here and there and to get higher vantage points in the game. Bonus points to the game for including the night club from the first film complete with hologram dancers and lots of dead bodies.

Yes, the legs WILL keep coming for you.

The music and sounds in the game compliment SkyNET with various remixes and rehashes of Brad Fiedel's famous composition for the film The Terminator. While the guns sound hefty and meaty and add to the feeling that you're packing a punch with these implements of robot-dismantling. It's a shame though that the graphics haven't fared too well over the years as this would be a good game to return to from time to time. Having said that it remains a solid game with a key flaw to it...

Get ready for bad acting in cutscenes.

Overall, the game is a patch that was released as a standalone. This set of missions should have been part of the original game and formed a cohesion in the main story rather than being as it is here, a set of side-missions masquerading as a full game in itself. Though having said that, it does remain a rather plot driven, plot focused game with no hints on how to achieve objectives beyond the initial blurb of the introduction to the mission, so there's no way points or guides on the HUD, you have to work it out for yourself. Not that THAT is a bad thing, it just would be nice if the game was longer or part of the original and followed the initial intentions laid out for this add-on pack turned full title.

Fallout 3

And so it begins, a mad little adventure in radiation

Stunning, amazing, awe-inspiring. These are words I use to describe myself on a regular basis. But enough about me, let's talk Fallout 3. I won't be using this to reference between Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, but to look at the game purely from the angle of the game itself. It's an intriguing and impressive game given the scope of the development and to bring about what seems to be a sort of 1960's sort of America into a nuclear (don't...) apocalypse and subsequent aftermath of the world.

The concept is this. Nukes were coming and the world was going to radioactive war and the powers that be decided to build a series of underground Vaults to hide people away. It worked to a point. A lot of people were left top-side to burn in the radiation fires and some managed to hide away under the ground to survive and thrive there while at the same time, many other situations arose where the vaults were used as experimentation sites.

Time for VATS, pick your body part and roll the dice to take your chances

YOU! The Hero(ine) are born, literally born from your mother straight into Liam Neeson's arms where upon you're aware of a situation where your mother dies and you're brought up by your father inside of the Vault. Jump forward a bit and it's baby's first steps time where you get to determine all the lovely number-crunchies that equate your stats and perks, a few more jumps give you a quick rundown of gunplay and the VATS system for targeting and attacking enemies, then we've a little situation where you're taking a test... or dodging the test, or just pratting around with the settings. Giving us a lovely little introduction to the idea that you can quite simply talk your way out of various situations and settings.

So you've got yourself a series of ways to play the game. The straight up, brute force method; the negotiator that can out-talk and out-think a ham-sandwich, or the middle ground of being a sneaky little bugger and doing all the naughty things that one would love to do, like planting bombs in people's pockets.

However, invariably the game world decides that shit has to go down, hit the fan and send tits up with a lead balloon before I mix up any more metaphors and launch YOU The Hero(ine) out into the world with a quick pause to double check if you're sure on the things that have happened so far, i.e. This is it, no way back now. Next stop the wide, wide world outside. And dear god it's big out there and very bleak.

The first time I stepped outside I was actually left in awe of the desolation wrought upon the landscape. The damaged buildings, destroyed villages, burnout shells of structures left with the chaos of their scaffolding in place and the dark oppressiveness came crashing down after creeping up like a stalker that stabs people with a knife made of suicidal impulses. It's really THAT bleak looking. Then I happily gallivanted off to go enjoy the world and kill things.

Rundown but stunning to behold, an ugly beauty.

However, this game is HUGE. I can't stress that enough. It's not quite like Huge on the scale of Just Cause 2 scale of games but there's the whole indoors thing going for it instead and a lot more variation in game and plot direction which compensates for the situation somewhat. Trust me when I say it's big, bleak, bad and will happily hand your arse to you on a silver platter and wipe it for you before slamming it back in your face. Because of this size, you get to do whatever you like to do in the game whenever you feel like it, though not as freely open as Daggerfall. If you want to follow the main quest, feel free to do so, if you want to raid some slavers then go do that. If you would like to run around and get into fights with the locals or nearby wildlife, do it! Or just rob the place.

So you're out and about, picking up lead pipes, pistols and getting chased by the nearby gangers while trying to find a place of refuge before realising that maybe you need to go find out what happened, what went wrong at the vault and why you and your father where rushed out of the door faster than Speedy Gonzales with a rocket stuffed up his arse. During this tour of the land you'll meet inhabitants of established towns and be given the chance to help them while levelling up your stats, or hinder them and become a bit of a demonised prick around the wastelands.

This is the sight that greets you upon exiting the vault and it's breath-taking.

There's a lovely little levelling system within the game. Kill something and get experience points, complete a quest for even more. Once you hit the level limit you can then choose a perk and boost some stats depending upon your intelligence and other perks already selected. So you could focus on hacking machines, learning science (which lets you shoot better with lasers...), getting better with light guns, heavy guns, your fists, fixing things, medical stuff to heal yourself and others, bombs and explosives, picking locks and so on. Though it all depends upon what you want to run for and how you want to play the game. Sometimes it's worthwhile going through the game as a smooth-talker and con/lie/cheat/seduce your way up the ladder until you get to the final boss and talk them out of doing whatever they're doing.

On top of this is the karma meter which swings back and forth depending upon a) how you resolve issues and b) how many non-combatant people you kill. Usually. The more of a fuckpig you are, then you'll get roving gangs of do-gooders coming to kill you and claim the bounty while the same is said for the other end of the good/bad spectrum with high level shitbags hunting you down because you're making everyone else look bad by comparison. The hardest way to play the game is be in the middle of it all and remain neutral to all situations. This does mean you can't hire certain people if you're too good/neutral/bad as they won't acknowledge your interests are in tune with their own, or some pseudo-bullshit along those lines.

Act effectively, because THIS one, will end you quickly.

It's a little broken in one regard, I blew up a town and slaughtered hundreds but were still considered to be a bastion of purity because of all the other tasks I'd done on the way there. Thankfully, there are some real brain-benders of situations where it's not so clear-cut as to the best way to resolve a situation. Namely, the Ghouls (intelligent... sometimes... zombie looking people) getting into a well-preserved, prestigious establishment. You could go on and try to change people’s ideas on the racism between one human and radiated one, you could wipe out all the ghouls, you could negotiate or attack the people with/without the help of the ghouls. But whatever is the outcome, it's never good. Situations like this need to be encouraged more often, force players into taking difficult paths with no clear outcome and even going into things with the best of intentions, can all backfire and blow up in your face.

Just a shame these happen so rarely in gaming.

Combat is a bit of a mixed bag, in that you can run in and take the usual first person perspective approach and go in guns blazing, or throwing explosives, or punching anyone out for it. Or there's the VATS system which seems to try to be something akin to Turn Based Combat in Real-time. You get to freeze time, pick a body part and see the % chance to hit the area and the resulting damage it could cause before applying the effect and seeing if it comes true and kill the target. All of these things can be improved and hampered by things like your arms being damaged (affects accuracy) using a weapon you're unskilled in (lowers damage effectively and/or accuracy) or being very familiar with such weapons which boosts your accuracy and damage to 95% and high hitting powers.

"After the last house party, we decided the riot wasn't worth the costs..."

Or blow them up into pieces if you're using the explosive perk that turns enemies into chunky dog chow. The added bonus of VATS gives you a lovely slow-motion effect of the fight while it plays out and if you kill the enemy, you get to watch them ragdoll it to their demise, best done with several rockets and send them sailing over the horizon. It's an interesting addition and comes in very hand in some of the more intense fights, or when sniping something over long distance... with a rocket. The bottom line is that for the most part, aside from the occasional odd camera angles, it is very fun.

I won't be reviewing the DLC for now as the overall gameplay doesn't change for the most part so the reviews I'll bring in another session on the blog as it'll be going over the story and missions and whatever little extras there are but the gameplay remains the same for the most part throughout all the DLCs.

Water water everywhere, and all of it to drink. But you won't want to.

Looking at the core game though, it's fun; it's shocking in the right doses and will happily draw you in with the effective pacing and engrossing gameplay and storylines, marred only by the game forcing you into a final choice that can be utterly pointless and stupid in the end-game if you've characters with you that can survive radiation. THAT aside, you'll spend a long time exploring, getting sidetracked to explore some more, explore and keep going until you've found ALMOST everything.

Then you'll play again to be an absolute shit to the world and become the evil bastard you rightly should be.