Atari's Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines on Xbox is a dull thud of a game that should never leave the shelf in your hand, let alone the store. Not only am I a glutton for abuse, but I just had to know if the GBA version was as bad as its big brother. I am relieved to say - it is not. While it will never be counted among the great games for the GBA, it is a fairly solid little isometric-view shooter and will entertain many gamers, at least for a little while.
As in the console version, the player takes on the role of a reprogrammed Cyberdyne Systems model 101 Terminator that is now being used by the human resistance. At the beginning of the game the Terminator must help the humans fight to and assemble the time displacement equipment that will allow the Terminator to go to the past and take up his primary mission of protecting the future leader of the resistance, John Conner. Unlike the console version which spent most of the game in the future missions and very little in the past, the GBA version feels a little more balanced between future and past missions.
Controls are quite effective with very little familiarization time needed. The d-pad does its usual thing of controlling movement; the A button fires the primary weapon; B throws a grenade, plants explosives or punches when you're out of explosives or select it from the weapons menu; the right shoulder button selects weapons from the available inventory; Select toggles the red Terminator vision that allows players to see some things that they can't in normal vision mode; and finally the left shoulder button selects between walk, run and strafe movement modes. This last control sounds a little awkward but really works quite well once you program yourself to be aware of it and use it.
Mission design is nothing fresh: go to a point, kill everything, protect, destroy, and trip switch, etc. There is really nothing new to write home about. There are some boss-like characters to take out along the way. These are taken down in the time-honoured shooter way of targeting parts like engines and guns of the beastie and whittling them down until they snuff it. A GBA duffer like me took about four hours to play through the single-player mode. A skilled player could probably do it in about two-and-a-half hours.
Weapons are a mixed bag. Some seem to kill with a glance while others are too weak. (Think about the Klobb in GoldenEye.) All suffer from the inexact aiming characteristics of an isometric-view shooter. When you're close, the punch seems to be about as effective as a grenade. It's not really well balanced there.
Graphics are not the game's strong point. They are not very detailed and only just suffice to make the game playable. Animation is minimal. It's a really kind of a slapdash job that indicates the title was probably hurried to make its release date. Want to see something really mutt ugly? Play it on the GameCube Game Boy Player.
Sound is okay, but if you're a slow player, (like me) you'll hear the same music repeated way too many times. Mercifully, there is an option to turn the music off and just play with sound effects. The sound effects are actually pretty good once the repetitive music is gone.
There is a system-link multiplayer mode in the game but I did not get a chance to play it. Atari lists two types of link play: Cooperative where two players battle Skynet together and Capture the Flag where up to four players can link up and go at each other.
In the end analysis Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is just barely an average game for the Game Boy Advance. If you liked the movie and really want a game based on the characters and events in the flick, this is definitely the lesser of the evils represented by the versions available for consoles and the GBA. Let's hope Atari's next round of efforts on the Terminator franchise are better than its last two. This franchise really deserves a first-rate game.
