Nostalgia Goggles
A future where armies of robots and human fighters battle it out in the middle of city ruins while blue and purple lasers fly over their head. Where giant robot tanks, flying HunterKillers and humans bombard each other with rockets causing big explosions and destruction wherever their rockets hit. And if it's not an all out battle, Resistance Fighters use guerilla tactics to sabotage and stop the robotic warmachine before engaging the machines that want to wipe the human race out head on.

It’s all there in this game, made by people that respected the source material in such shocking detail that especially fans of these future scenes of Terminator and Terminator: Judgement Day owe it to themselves to play it.

Gameplay
If Terminator: Resistance would not take place in the Terminator universe it would just be your average middle-class First-person shooter. It uses many mechanics from a variety of games in the same genre. The looting, crafting, lock picking, hacking, inventory managing, leveling-up and weapon-upgrade systems are all executed competently enough that there is not much to complain about.

Most of the time you will play alone. Exploring the small open-ended battlefields. You will avoid being spotted by Terminators but you can also just shoot at everything in sight without being punished for it. There will be various Terminator base-camps you can infiltrate and blow up. The game only saves at hideouts or sporadically at choke points on the map. But there will also be times where you run in a group of people rushing down the murder-machines coming for you.

While out in the field, you will fulfill main and side quests. Sidequests are given by NPCs you can talk to at base camps. When interacting with the NPCs you can affect their likability to you as well as the outcome of their story at the end of the game. There is even two love-interests you can sleep with if you so desire. Obviously only if your likability to them is high enough.

Audio
Terminator: Resistance doesn’t use the official music from the films but rather its own renditions and versions of the well known themes the franchise has to offer. This is especially helpful to increase the authenticity of the movies the game aims for. There is nothing more epic for a fan as hearing that iconic horn-sound when hiding behind a pillar while a group of death bringing robots passes by or while exchanging purple lasers with the iconic T-800s, HunterKillers and Airships during all out combat with your NPC teammates.

Difficulty
I started playing on Hard because I heard the game is too easy. And to my surprise it was. Even after increasing it to Extreme difficulty it was still not hard enough. It just makes the enemies more bullet spongy. If you want to play it only so you can say: “Yes, I battled in the future war of the Terminator universe!”, this might be fine. But if you are looking for a challenge then it can become a problem. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it can be to some.

Conclusion
In conclusion you can already guess that this is a game made for fans by fans. It’s hard to recommend it to somebody that has no idea about the source material. People would also think that it is a mediocre game. Yes, it’s not a perfect by all means, but passion and flawless, even though not outstanding, implementation of all its core game mechanics make it shine. Again, if you are a fan, then Terminator: Resistance is the game that you always wanted and then some. Happy Terminating!