Humanity may try to escape, but the foe it is up against is fearsome. Even when it looks like Ocean movie tie-in games might have been destroyed, their pieces form together and rise up to rule again as if nothing had changed. Well, not nothing. Perhaps inspired by a movie with so many key computer graphics elements already that it lends itself perfectly to games, Ocean carry on with the creativity of Batman the Movie the Game.
It is several whole levels before you get to the inevitable point of a stage of walking along slowly and shooting people, and for that we can be grateful. Instead, the first level (repeated with different backgrounds later on) is a one-on-one fighting game, Terminator vs Terminator, health bars and all. Admittedly, it plays out less like a battle between two perfectly honed killing machines and more like the dance of a pair of marionettes controlled by semi-conscious puppeteers, beating even Way of the Tiger for clunkiness, but at least it’s something different.
From there it’s quickly onto a cartoonish top-down motorbike riding level, via another innovation. It’s time for our first bit of FMV – Full Motion Video! With increased computing power available, how better to make use of it than to give the player a break from doing anything and make them watch some pre-recorded video footage? Especially if it’s taken from a movie your game is tied in to. And so, there are tiny snatches of Terminator 2, played through a narrow slit of screen estate, so perhaps PMV (Partial Motion Video) or LMV (Letterbox Mediated Video) would be more appropriate.
I guess these video segments could work as a reminder having seen the film of which bit the next level is meant to represent. The thing is, though, all of the levels already noticeably value reminding you of a bit of Terminator 2 the film well above being in any way enjoyable to play, so it’s a bit of a needless addition.
Breaking the separate genres of level down into smaller and more distinct chunks than ever has an interesting effect. It stops Terminator 2 from feeling that much like any of its predecessors. Instead, it exists plainly in a separate world of themed mini-games, even if it’s one with unusually and unhelpfully strict restrictions to carrying on from each one to the next (not renewing any health that you lose in previous levels is rather cruel). Terminator 2 does not, for all of its faults, represent another Robocop. It’s closer to a really bad, Terminator-themed Daley Thompson’s Super Test. The beast shifts shape again.
