Final thoughts (some spoilers)

[TigerQuoll]

#11567

I just finished the game the other night, and this is kind of a grab bag for various thoughts I have about this game that haven’t already been experssed elsewhere.

First, some thoughts on the engine:
I don’t think anyone has mentioned the lighting, but I was pretty impressed with how light sources including dynamic ones like explosions actually cast circular lighting effects on walls and floors, and that they varied based on intensity. I don’t think we’d see anything like that in other games for quite some time.
The rest of the lighting was fairly flat, but I think that had more to do with the intended aesthetic.

I liked that you could enter buildings and things to scrounge for ammo or complete secondary objectives. Some of them had a bit of a tardis effect (bigger on the inside than the outside), but it was overall a nice touch.

With a bit of polish and troubleshooting, I think this engine could have been good for other games, such as survival horror or RPGs. I’d love to see someone make a retro soulslike in it!

Thoughts on the overall design:
Despite the bleak, flat, grey and black look of it, they did manage to put in some nice visual design details. The fact that most of the enemies have a little bit of blue on them, and there’s basically no blue anywhere else, really helps make them stand out against the background.

Maybe a few too many weapons that you rarely use, especially the energy ones.
And the grenade weapons were a little too finicky to use – you really need to score direct hits with these lurching, inaccurate projectiles to do any significant damage. The point of lobbed weapons like this is supposed to be the opposite – fling one in the general direction of baddies and watch them go flying!

The car sections can get in the bin. Especially the final one, which forces you to drive really really slowly, stop starting all the time to destroy enemies, which I feel totally undermines the point of a car section.

Thoughts on the story (SPOILERS!):
Fairly decent concept, if not exactly groundbreaking, and often not well written.
I was feeling reasonably positive about the game right until the very end, which made me really have to re-think my opinion. They totally screwed up the canon of the first two movies, as if they never happened!
I was able to forgive them for sending robots through time (which, if you watch the movies shouldn’t work without wrapping them in person meat).
But the finale just seems like a complete middle finger to the story of the films.
Kill eveyone offscreen, don’t let them have the arcs they’re supposed to have (Kyle Reese especially seems like he shows up just for name recognition, then gets unceremoniously killed without really ever doing anything even close to his role in the original film).
Then you stop skynet from ever happening by just sending a virus back in time???? Why bother calling this a Terminator game at all?

I probably still liked the game overall, but that ending just left a bad taste in my mouth…

[watchful]

#11570

This engine (XnGine) was used for DaggerFall, and I think that’s why the map is so small and odd. It seems meant for dungeons in that game, where understanding twisting and overlapping tunnels is more important.

I’d agree the explosives had far too little splash damage, making them unreliable without perfect aim or kiting into opportunistic vantages.

Crosshairs or iron sights would’ve helped, especially for the grenade and rocket launchers. I believe if you play FS through SkyNet it gains the ability to lock on to enemies.

The enemies really need larger hit-boxes. It was impressive that bullets felt like they traced the actual visible shapes of characters, especially compared to Quake and similar games with awkwardly large and simple cuboids. They were just too hard to hit for a game without any autoaim.

I thought cars were fun, though on higher difficulty one really has to go slow to avoid getting surrounded. It would’ve benefited from the ability to pick up or use med kits, or even getting out and back in. IIRC SkyNet does let one get in and out at will, at least in multi-player.

My headcanon is that this is just an alternate timeline, or one that’s later unwound and replaced by other time-travel shenanigans.

[TigerQuoll]

#11572

I could go on a massive rabbit hole/tangent/rant about retcons, reboots, revisions and alternate timelines etc. but this is not the place!
If that’s your headcanon, though, then that’s fair enough!

Ah, they used the engine in Daggerfall! That feels about right. Apparently (according to one reddit post I found) they lost the source code. Pity – I guess my hopes of an XnGine-based soulslike isn’t going to happen any time soon!

[watchful]

#11612

Finally finished FS tonight. What bothered me most were…

– circle staging nearly impossible since enemies have such tiny hit boxes

– have to peek-a-boo strafe

– rocket tanks and turrets feel too OP

– glitches make me yearn for a remaster, and FutureShock32 has too many issues of its own

– worst of all, progress is sometimes hidden by secrets–for example, feels like you have to destroy every vehicle or computer near walls in case they block the only way forward

All that said, I still love this game. Atmosphere, mostly-modern controls, varied missions, and interesting (if outside cannon) story make it worth playing. Though I wouldn’t recommend it to normies until it gets a remaster.