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For people out there who enjoy video games, the recent Terminator: Resistance is real good - I'm not just saying that as a die-hard Terminator fanboy; even though critics shat all over it it's been getting universally positive reviews from gamers and fans. It's an FPS set during the Future War as depicted in the first two movies, and it absolutely, 100% nails it. the sound effects and soundtrack are on point, the visuals are perfect (and the developers went the extra mile that since Judgment Day was in 1997, there aren't any cars or tech newer than the mid-late 90s), the T-800 endoskeleton is goddamn gorgeous, and firing plasma guns feels satisfying. Some of the game is a little rough around the edges - the voice acting is a little shaky sometimes, the enemy AI isn't that hot, the difficulty balancing could have used some work, and the enemy variety is a little thin, but it's also a budget title made by a no-name studio with an abysmal track record. You can really tell the developers gave a poo poo, though, and the problems have less to do with corporate meddling or "crunch time" and more to do with lack of talent and experience. Frankly I'll take a flawed passion project brought down by developer skill limitations over a broken game due to laziness and rushed development. There are some things that I wish were more fleshed out or better executed (Terminator AI is pretty bad except for a couple standout actions) or got more time in the spotlight that are genuinely really cool (Infiltrators have location-specific damage when you fight them, so you can blast the skin and clothes off of specific limbs or body parts as you fight them - but because of how the fights are structured I didn't even notice it until the very end of the game and only by accident). There's a lot more depth than I was expecting, as well. There's a huge amount of exploration and scavenging, and the game heavily rewards going off the beaten path - it feels very much like a spiritual successor to Terminator: Future Shock from the 90s. There's crafting, a skill tree system, weapon upgrading and customization, an in-game economy for buying/selling stuff you scavenge, open maps with side quests, character interactions with their own subplots and dialogue options, multiple endings to the game, there's a lot to do that I wasn't expecting. I got about 15 hours of gameplay out of it, on one playthrough. The "plot twists" are pretty predictable, but the late-game stuff is loving awesome. I'll go ahead and spoiler-tag it because it's way cooler to experience it blind if you're going to play the game - the game ramps up to the final assault on Skynet's core, and it turns into this huge battle with HKs buzzing overhead and endoskeletons all over the place, and it turns out to be a ruse by Skynet and that they'd relocated the core elsewhere and the whole battle was a trap. After you escape from the trap, you go back to the Resistance hideout and it's been razed by Terminators and it's really well executed, and then you learn about the time machine and lead the assault on the time machine's location - and it's an even more insane battle than the first fight for the core, with Resistance soldiers everywhere knocking HKs out of the sky, Terminators exchanging fire and blowing poo poo up, a hijacked Resistance HK tank abruptly entering the battle and wrecking poo poo as it plows through walls and follows you through the battle, airstrikes blowing Terminators apart, just total chaos with plasma beams criss-crossing everywhere and the whole time the Terminator theme music is just pounding and it's loving awesome. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Jan 19, 2020 |
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Jan 19, 2020 23:33
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Sodomy Hussein posted:whoa are you about to tell me Xenomrph is stanning for licensed products again??? Hey man Colonial Marines is a Bad Game but I legit had a good time with Resistance. It’s got flaws but the vast majority of the user reviews for the game are positive, and with good reason. A lot of ImpAtom’s criticisms are valid, and with more polish or with a more talented studio I imagine most of them would have been ironed out, but I was willing to overlook a lot of the jank because the visuals were just so good. It doesn’t even reuse a lot of assets (which I didn’t expect), and what is reused is disguised pretty well. I thought this video did a pretty unbiased assessment of the game’s strengths and weaknesses, and why users are rating it so much higher than professional critics. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Jan 20, 2020 |
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Jan 20, 2020 01:24
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Sodomy Hussein posted:I mean we can just skip to the point and admit that people will put up with anything to indulge in their preferred intellectual property, be it overpriced games or incredibly janky fan mods. This is mostly how 40K games have worked since the end of THQ. The problem with this mindset is it assumes all licensed products are trash and the only people who like them are fanboys, or that fanboy opinions can never be trusted because they’ll gobble up anything with a certain label on it and call it good. It’s not like I just gobble up whatever meager Terminator offerings thrown my way and insist they’re good - the recent comic series “Terminator: Sector War” by Brian Wood was real goddamn bad, and I would strongly recommend people steer clear of it. Bias is inherent, but I like to think I know how to set that aside and recommend a product depending on actual criteria and put my biases aside. I can look at a game like Resistance and say “would people like it because it’s inherently good” vs “would people like it because it’s Terminator”, and those two factors have their own criteria. Resistance leans REALLY hard on being an “authentic” Terminator experience, and knocks it out of the park. For some, that kind of experience is enough to outweigh some of the jank in the nuts and bolts gameplay. Would I even be playing this if it wasn’t a Terminator game? Probably not, and I’d be a lot harsher on its gameplay problems. But the game sets out to be an authentic Terminator experience and mostly crushes it, so that’s where I’m going to look for my enjoyment. Compare it to, say, Colonial Marines which wasn’t just a bad game because it was a broken mess, but ALSO because it was a poo poo Aliens game. Also Terminator Resistance is like $30 on Steam, which is where I got it. That felt like a perfect price; the game definitely isn’t worth $60. Not to stray too off-topic, but there are a lot of trash 40k games out there but we’ve also gotten some enjoyable ones (Space Marine, Deathwing Enhanced Edition, Mechanicus).
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Jan 20, 2020 03:26
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david_a posted:I don’t know that I’d agree that it nailed the aesthetic; this “Tech-Com 2029” in-progress fan game looks much closer
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Jan 20, 2020 04:47
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Stairmaster posted:you're the dude who stans colonial marines though your video game opinions are worthless I defended that game before it came out (seven years ago) and have since slammed it twice in this thread in the last 10 posts, get over it my dude It’s not like I’m the only one enjoying Resistance, it’s got an 8.1 user score on metacritic and “very positive” reviews on Steam. I brought it up because I had a good time with it, a good number of people who played it clearly got enjoyment out of it, but others might have skipped it because of the bad critic scores.
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Jan 20, 2020 08:16
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Vintersorg posted:I was surprised that I really like this. I could almost accept the T-800/Carl becoming a thing - like, ok... I guess? But everything was pretty decent. Things moved a bit too fast in the action scenes - I wanted to really see Arnold all hosed up but it never gave him a chance. I got you, fam https://www.sideshow.com/collectibles/terminator-dark-fate-t-800-chronicle-collectibles-905464
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Jan 21, 2020 23:05
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I mean I feel the same way about it to a lesser degree as Alien 3. It doesn't respect the previous movie at all. It's not nearly as bad as Alien 3, but just like Alien 3 it doesn't do anything interesting with the premise, it's just a thematic rehash of a prior movie.
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Jan 22, 2020 20:03
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:It's also the fact that she's reconnected with others and eradicated the aliens. Whoops! Sorry, they're dead, the evil android hosed her over again, time to run around a spookhouse while an alien kills the lower class. Only this time she doesn't make it out alive. Good poo poo. There is no evil android in Alien3. Wild T posted:Alien 3 is a movie where a group of religious men refuse to allow a woman who was impregnated against her will to have an abortion, which results in her killing herself. I give it credit for that at least. I’d say a better analogy would be: Alien 3 is a movie where a religious leader refuses to allow a woman who was impregnated with the devil’s mother against her will to have an abortion unless she kills the devil first, which results in her killing herself.
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Jan 22, 2020 22:14
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I’m obviously absurdly biased, but if your memory of ‘Alien3’ is hazy then the Assembly Cut is worth a watch. Well I mean, full objectivity here, it’s still a very flawed movie especially in light of what came before, but the Assembly Cut is a masterclass in how to salvage a movie that by all rights should have been a dumpster fire, and was plagued by one of the most notorious train wrecks of a production in Hollywood history. There are plenty of valid reasons to poo poo on Alien3, but it’s still got a lot going for it.
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Jan 23, 2020 06:08
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Yeah, it was definitely playing against type. It cracks me up that I basically think of him as Burke even though he convincingly played a very nice sitcom husband for the better part of a decade. I can’t find a clip of it but there was a gag in an episode of Mad About You where Helen Hunt happened to be watching ‘Aliens’ and asks Paul Reiser if he’s seen it, and he replies that he’s only seen the first movie. Tangentially related: https://twitter.com/paulreiser/status/880437760892579844?s=21
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Jan 24, 2020 20:56
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dmitri posted:Wow, I'd love to hear that. Do you have links or anything? Ditto, that’s wild. His voice being part of his “brand” makes perfect sense, though.
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Jan 25, 2020 17:02
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BiggerBoat posted:You're the first person I've seen say it's good I'd play the absolute hell out of your game idea, though. Maybe have it be a sort of open-world game but with some closed-off setpieces, where the Terminator tracks you as an ever-present threat as you're trying to achieve objectives and determine how to finally kill it. In my ideal fantasy land with an unlimited budget and game development capabilities that likely don't exist, it would take some carefully crafted AI, one where it doesn't just instantly home in on your location and seem omniscient, but you also can't just "game" it and find a consistent way to stall it over and over. Perhaps give it ways to learn from your actions so that the same tactics don't work all the time, or it will try to anticipate where you're going and stake it out or intercept you, or you can find ways to injure it and drive it off so it has to repair itself (perhaps damaging the living tissue has some sort of effect, so if it's damaged and hasn't repaired/covered itself, bystanders would see it and freak out, giving you a warning that it's on top of you). Funnily enough, the very first Terminator video game was essentially what you're talking about.
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Jan 26, 2020 20:31
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BiggerBoat posted:This. I think it's the only way to re-do the thing that could be interesting at all and that revisits the core themes the made the first two so good but in a different context. I don't know about combining it with Lord of the RIngs or Game of Thrones but a Terminator movie combined with, say, a western sounds cool to me and makes the most sense. Trying to run from the bastard on horseback and hoping to round up some TNT or even giving a nod to T1 and have Arnold do his bar shtick by invading a saloon and demanding "your hat, your boots and your horse" might be a crowd pleaser. Have him cheat at poker with his laser eye thingy I’ve had half-baked ideas in my head, if only just set pieces I’d like to see or could provide cool imagery. - a Terminator marching across No Man’s Land during WWI and just getting shot to hell and knocked down by artillery fire and whatever, but it just keeps getting up and makes it across to the other side and just cleans house in the trench - a Terminator in the old west getting hit by a steam locomotive, derailing it but massively loving up the Terminator - obligatory “Terminator tries to assassinate/protect Hitler” - a Terminator in ancient Egypt, gets itself trapped in a pyramid tomb that gets sealed up and can’t get out. Fast-forward to like the 1920s, archaeologists find its mummified remains, its power cell long-dead.
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Jan 27, 2020 21:12
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I’d accept a Band of Brothers-style series set in 2029, with some random Resistance squad doing military stuff and gradually contributing to the war effort as a whole by liberating prison camps or whatever, leading up to the movie players being sent back in time for the events of the movies.
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Jan 28, 2020 16:58
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The film isn’t the only thing that climaxes. 
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Jan 28, 2020 21:43
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To be fair Salvation was one of those movies that was caught up in the writer’s strike going on at the time, so it was getting slapped together and re-written and reshot by non-writers scrambling to cobble something together. See also: Transformers Revenge of the Fallen. I don’t hate Salvation, I think it’s got some cool elements in it. A protagonist learning they’re actually a Terminator is a slick twist (that was spoiled in the trailer). The T-600s were a neat design and I liked how bulky and relentless they were. I liked the showdown with the T-800 at the end for the most part - the CGI endoskeleton looked real good, drenching it with molten metal was a cool visual, and having it give Connor his scars was neat. The whole sequence from the Harvester attack at the gas station through to the moto-terminator chase ending with the HK dragging the truck off the bridge was a really cool setpiece. As a whole it’s kind of unfocused, but I don’t really mind it. Granted it’s easier to just pick out the clips I want to rewatch on YouTube than it is to rewatch the whole movie, but oh well. Surprisingly, Salvation got a comic book sequel years after the movie came out, and I found it to be a remarkably coherent continuation of the movie while being a satisfying end to the Future War, and simultaneously tying back to the first 3 movies in believable and interesting ways. It also had parallel stories playing out in both the future and the past, and the pacing managed to keep the “past” story interesting and kept you wondering what bearing it would have on the “future” story right up until it’s conclusion, sort of like the movie ‘Frequency’. It also had some of the ideas mentioned in this thread, like a Terminator sent back in time by Skynet to protect a target rather than kill them. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1616554991/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_i1kmEbKWWGZ9G If we’re going down the rabbit hole of Terminator comics, and it really is a massive rabbit hole of crazy poo poo, the quality is all over the map from “great art, not great story”, “bad but so loving insane you can’t look away”, “genuinely clever ideas”, “just plain bad”, and everything in between. Hell, comic book artist Alex Ross’s very first professional work was the comic “Terminator: The Burning Earth”, and it’s loving gorgeous.  
Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Jan 28, 2020 |
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Jan 28, 2020 23:05
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david_a posted:I stumbled across The Burning Earth in a used bookstore. I remember the story being OK, but being pre-T2 it’s in its own little universe. The story has some neat moments, and some “ehhhh” stuff, but the art is the standout part. It takes the premise that Kyle was wrong when he said Skynet was defeated as he was sent back in time, and Skynet reboots after he leaves and continues the war in earnest. I think it takes place in 2039, and the Resistance is all but wiped out since Skynet has been re-nuking the planet and using HKs to deploy chemical warfare. Like there’s a part where John Connor contemplates eating a bullet because he just can’t take it anymore and he’s starting to think that humanity is hosed anyway. The art for Connor is noteworthy because since it came out pre-T2, nobody knew what Connor was supposed to look like. He’s distinctly drawn with Linda Hamilton’s facial features, like it’s very clear that he’s her kid. If you like Alex Ross’s art, I’d say it’s practically a must-read. Like, the art is way, way better than the story deserves and greatly elevates the material, in my opinion.
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Jan 28, 2020 23:58
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Groovelord Neato posted:Like Sir Kodiak said it's that we've accepted there isn't going to be a good one made. Sure it's not impossible but I'm having a hard time thinking of a franchise with a string of bad sequels hitting it out of the park way on down the road. Halloween maybe? I can think of a few Final Destination (the 5th one is loving great) Fast and Furious series had one hell of a comeback
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Mar 29, 2020 23:59
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SUNKOS posted:I liked that part in Genisys where they set up a trap for the T1000. The T1 callback was less entertaining but it was still fun seeing the time travel mechanic used in a way to present the characters dealing with the threats from prior movies with their own preparation given that previously they were constantly pursued and never really had time to stop. Overall I liked Genisys, I thought it did some pretty novel things. It shuffled up the character dynamics (Sarah essentially became Kyle and vice versa), it did something interesting with John Connor (and would have been a cool twist if the trailers hadn't spoiled it), the T1 callbacks were neat, it showed the equivalent of the logical progression of what T2 Arnold would have been like if he hadn't self-terminated and had stuck around to care for young John, the effects for bad guy John Connor were cool (especially when he's getting pulled apart by the MRI machine), all around I thought it did some cool and unique stuff and I had a good time with it. Right from jump it toyed with the idea that the timeline you're watching isn't the timeline you know, if you're looking at the details - the T-800 endoskeletons are designed slightly differently, and according to the filmmakers that was on purpose. Here's the OG endoskeleton: https://www.sideshow.com/collectibles/terminator-t-800-endoskeleton-sideshow-collectibles-400060 And here's a good look at the Genisys revision: https://chroniclecollectibles.com/collections/chronicle-products/products/endoskeleton Oddly enough Dark Fate used the redesigned endoskeleton as well.
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Mar 30, 2020 05:14
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Sodomy Hussein posted:You would think that, but then you watch it and it's a real letdown. Part of the issue is that it arrived on network television before prestige TV had caught on everywhere, so the budget kind of sucks, which is not what you would hope for in a show about terminators. Another part of it is that the casting could in many cases be better. I don’t know what you’re talking about, my original timeline got 8 seasons of the show and it loving ruled, they really ramped up the production values in season 4. Wait did I say my timeline? I mean, uh Great Scott!
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Apr 3, 2020 22:38
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iamsosmrt posted:Truth. I've quoted Furlong from that movie since I was like 7 years old. It's definitely an annoying performance, but it's pretty memorable and (unintentionally?) funny as hell at times. He's also supposed to be 10? Yeah, T2 is set in 1995 when John is 10; T1 is set May 12th 1984, John is born circa January 1985.
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Jul 6, 2020 20:17
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I care. 
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Sep 11, 2021 18:19
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The “Terminator Salvation: The Final Battle” comic series manages to chain off of the ending of Terminator Salvation, loop it back around with T1-T3, and give a satisfying end to the war, it’s pretty neat.
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Sep 6, 2022 01:44
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I’ll re-read it so I can give a proper recap.
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Sep 6, 2022 02:17
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I’ll step up to bat for the whole sequence where the giant Harvester robot shows up and starts snatching people right up to where Reese gets captured, that entire bit is cool, moves at a good clip, has neat action, and has some cool shots and visuals. https://youtu.be/1xOPmhQnC3w https://youtu.be/HRuLB1phE1Q
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Sep 7, 2022 03:03
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toggle posted:Why can’t they just make a movie of the shiny robots stepping on skulls while shooting blue lasers at rag tag survivors? 2hours of that would work for me. Play the Terminator Resistance videogame, for a budget FPS it absolutely nails the Future War aesthetic, the (initial) hopelessness of the human survivors, the sound design, Terminators being a real threat, the atmosphere and visuals, it’s great and wayyyy better than I expected it to be.
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Sep 8, 2022 16:03
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Neo Rasa posted:Is there a mod to make the lasers purple? I think the lasers are already purple, or at least for some of the guns.
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Sep 9, 2022 21:27
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