REINSTALL OLD GAMES, NEW PERSPECTIVES
Attempts to bring the fiction of the films it is based on to life
Revisiting Teyon’s game after Robocop: Rogue City.
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.
On the face of it, this is a smart choice of setting for a Terminator game. Post-apocalyptic Los Angeles was only ever glimpsed in the first two movies, and the attempts to explore it further in the films have been thoroughly half-baked. Cameron’s vision is striking and distinctive in a way that no Terminator film since has replicated, and if you recreate it in a videogame, you’d be well on the way to a winner.
In this regard, the opening minutes of Resistance show promise. The game kicks off with Rivers in hard retreat from the Californian town of Pasadena, where his division had been wiped out by the Annihilation Line, Skynet’s rolling frontline of Terminators directed to crush the Resistance. It sees you crawling through the wreckage of what was once idyllic southern California, evading the laser-red eyes of skeletal T-800s. Teyon is clearly keen to evoke the chaos and desperation shown in the opening minutes of both Terminator films. Resistance has the same indigo tinge to the night, the same devastated landscape illuminated by fires. It even directly mimics the first proper scene in the film, a T-800’s foot crashing down onto a human skull.
