TERMINATOR: RESISTANCE

Revisiting Teyon’s game after Robocop: Rogue City.

-  Rick rane

I ditched Terminator: Resistance soon after starting it back in 2019, writing it off as yet another dismal movie tie-in from Polish developer Teyon, creator of 2014’s lambasted Rambo: The Video Game. But after enjoying RoboCop: Rogue City late last year, I wondered whether I’d been too quick to dismiss Teyon’s earlier work. While no masterpiece, Rogue City is a faithful and thoughtful adaptation of Verhoeven’s film, one that does a good job of embodying you in Alex Murphy’s metal exoskeleton. And although Resistance was fairly well panned by critics at the time, it has garnered a ‘Very Positive’ rating on Steam in the years since release.

Hence, Terminator: Resistance seemed ripe for reappraisal. And having now returned to its depiction of Terminator’s blighted future, it is a better game than I gave it initial credit for, but nowhere near as much as its Steam reviewers would have you believe. Like RoboCop, it earnestly attempts to bring the fiction of the films it is based on to life. But it is far less successful, mostly demonstrating how far Teyon has come in the last four years.

As I mentioned, Terminator: Resistance focuses on the aftermath of the nuclear holocaust caused by Skynet on August 29, 1997, when the remnants of humanity are locked in a struggle against the machines. You play as Jacob Rivers, a private in the Resistance who has been specifically targeted by Skynet for reasons unknown.