Review by: Brian Rowe

With any title featuring “Star” in the title constantly hogging the sci-fi limelight, I don’t think many people realize how pervasive the Terminator franchise is. Over 25 years, it has made the rounds with three movie sequels, a decent TV show, numerous comics and crossovers, and some awesome toys. It turned a single sentence into a cultural idiom, and I’ve never met a person who didn’t think Judgment Day kicked all sorts of robotic keester. With such enduring gusto, you might assume that someone would have squeezed out a proper game by now.

Salvation, a prequel to the movie of the same name, does have some good things going for it. Taking a cue from shooters like Gears of War and Rainbow Six: Vegas, cover is the lynchpin of combat, and Salvation manages to make improvements that I hope will inspire other developers. A reticule appears to show your movement options when trying to move from object to object, whether they are to the front, the side, or five strides away. With one button-press, John Connor sprints and slides with swift and smooth precision to the next bit of cover, offering a far greater range of motion than Marcus Phoenix ever had.

The other feature I like, at least in theory, and drawn from Army of Two, is the emphasis on flanking, which only makes sense given the heavy armor of your mechanical opponents. Terminators, especially the T-600s and their Gatling guns, are not to be trifled with. Taking one head-on is suicide, so the best strategy is to let your teammate draw attention while you sweep along the cover to pin your enemy in the crossfire. As Army of Two also faced, the problem with flanking is that you’re A.I. teammate is both a terrible shot and target, leaving you to hope that your enemies might occasionally turn away long enough for you to pop off a few rounds.

Salvation’s combat was obviously built with cooperative play in mind, but unlike every other game I’ve mentioned, the level design can barely accommodate one person. Although Salvation is graphically competent with beautifully post-apocalyptic panoramas in the distance, the playable area amounts to a singular, claustrophobic corridor of debris leading with rhythmic monotony to the next section of cover and the same four enemies. At no point does exploration or intrigue even threaten to enter the equation. To make matters worse, the entire journey is captured with the “shaky-cam” that sloppy filmmakers seem so fond of. It’s so bad that every copy of Salvation ought to come with a free bottle of Diazepam.