The aforementioned sound glitch was only one of the bugs I ran into during the game. Hit detection was really bad, but at times an enemy would fall down when I had not fired again at him - as though he were reacting to previous shots I'd fired his way. I also had a SWAT team member run into a block of stone after I disarmed him and kept running in place during a mission I was not to kill any humans. The poor sap continued to run against that block of stone for a couple of minutes. I left and came back to find he was still running against the block of stone. He ceased to amuse me so I just left him there...running endlessly.

Control of the FPS portion of the game is adequate, pretty much what we've come to expect in a post-Halo world. The controls for the hand-to-hand fighting sequences are less than satisfying. Three buttons are used for attacks and one for blocking. In combination with the left stick several combos could be pulled off. That is the theory, but there seemed to a bad lag between button press and execution that made it an exercise in frustration. Luckily just randomly pressing buttons pretty much insured victory.

One fun surprise in the game was finding a working Atari Missile Command arcade machine in one of the future missions. By walking up to the machine and pushing the 'A' "use" button it could be played and unlocked in the extras of the game. Apparently there was also a way to unlock a Centipede game, but I must have missed it in my travels. Finding the Missile Command game was definitely one of the game's highpoints.

One fun surprise in the game was finding a working Atari Missile Command arcade machine in one of the future missions. By walking up to the machine and pushing the 'A' "use" button it could be played and unlocked in the extras of the game. Apparently there was also a way to unlock a Centipede game, but I must have missed it in my travels. Finding the Missile Command game was definitely one of the game's highpoints.

The game disc does contain some interesting extras such as film clips and other stuff that are unlocked during play but they are not worth the pain the player has to go through to get them.

Infogrames/Atari really blew it with Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. The summer-blockbuster movie was far better than anyone expected. The T3 game is far worse than even I expected after seeing it at E3, and in some ways is even worse than Infogrames/Atari's previous Terminator fiasco: Terminator: Dawn Of Fate.

Everything about the game indicates that some marketing exec was behind the scenes saying, "This game has got to launch with the movie DVD whether it is ready or not." Yep, and they paid for it: T3:ROTM is bad looking, worse sounding, poor playing and bug-ridden. In the end analysis, buy the DVD and enjoy the movie - leave the game on the shelf.