I have waited a very, very long time to play a good T2 game. Fun Fact: T2 was the first movie I ever saw in a theater. And what a banger movie to go see. I lucked out, just like I seriously lucked out on what games I played first. It wasn't the first movie I ever watched in full, that would be Big Trouble In Little China. It aired on TV and we taped it / watched it a zillion times after that. I didn't see The Terminator (the first one) until after I'd seen T2 a couple times, so I saw them in reverse order and that certainly affected my perception of both.
This game dropped several weeks ago and folks have had time to really pick it apart since then. It's the T2 game we should have gotten in the 1990's, no doubt about it. Of all the things I could be covering on here, I wouldn't be much of a Jumper if I didn't cover this. T2 is back, and back in what is effectively a time capsule from 1995 or so. Ironically.
(Seen here with the inverted box art, which gives it a slightly-pixellated image of John Connor, and is considerably better than the store shelves box art)
I've played a lot of games based on Terminator 2. Pretty much all of them at this point, I think. And nearly all of them were terrible back in the day. So this game is really an attempt to put right something that went horribly off the rails: The complete mauling of the T2 license. Before this we had all of one truly good game based on this series: Terminator Resistance a few years ago. And a couple of solid games that at least didn't make you feel awful for playing them (T2 The Arcade Game, Terminator for Sega CD). Terminator Salvation for PS3/360 was a decent game too, but it was only 3-4 hours long at best and felt like the first quarter of a much better game. Beyond those, we had a zillion terrible cash-grabs for every retro system imaginable.
Terminator 2 for the Super NES still gives me nightmares, with the road-maze between levels and the "dead puppet" jumps.
Terminator 2 for the NES has you fighting a biker twice your size at the end of the first level who takes dozens of punches to the groin to defeat and is much more likely to just kill you first (with no real way to avoid it) so good luck even seeing level 2 in that one.
Terminator 1 for the NES has to be one of the worst video games I've ever played, with Kyle Reese jumping haphazardly through one sewer level after another, firing slow bullets and falling into pits because landing on platforms is basically rolling dice on whether you fall through or not.
I could keep going, but we get the picture. One bad game after another. Now, time to play what we should have gotten in the 1990's.
We get a neat series of still-shots for the intro. This game looks and plays similarly to things like Stargate and Super Star Wars on the SNES, by design.
I always felt like that guy to the right of John here was a reprogrammed terminator. The way he scans the scene back and forth very slowly with his head isn't very human. Likely a little Easter egg for what was to come in this movie, since first-time viewers wouldn't know going in that Arnold was the good guy this time (or that terminators could be reprogrammed).
Oh yeah, this game has an instruction book. A full-on legitimate instruction book!
I thought this sort of thing was left in the past, long ago. You see, back in the day, there were these things called instruction manuals, and games had them packed-in, and they often had all kinds of illustrations and maps and other cool things to look at until you got home from the store and could play the game.
We start with an unexpected scene of Sarah training John in how to fight. This takes place in 1994, before Judgment Day in the original pre-T2 timeline. The one where T2 didn't happen but T1 did. I think. I don't know tech stuff.
Pretty basic gameplay here, you jump and shoot. Lotta jumping and shooting. Some banditos kidnapped John to child-traffick him, so Sarah goes hunting them down. She MURDERS EVERYONE IN HER PATH.
Multiple difficulty levels. Tried to play through the game on No Problemo (Normal) but I ran into a real brick wall: Run out of lives and it's back to the beginning of the game. Nope, seriously. They really DID go back to the 90's for this!
Playing on "Easy Money" just gives you unlimited lives, so I did that after a few failed runs at getting through the story.
First boss is this guy who kidnapped John. He's got a damn minigun, but other than that, basic boss fight here. Holding down a shoulder button lets you aim around while stationary, and the path to victory is keeping your blasting going on the boss as they move around. Not a lot of emphasis on dodging here, but it has a dodge roll if you need it.
Sarah Connah is a legit psychopath in this game. Not even joking around. She just murders people and beats them up and whatnot without batting an eye.
I have no idea where John learned the "you can't just go around killing people" thing, because it sure wasn't from her.
Next up: San Francisco Construction Site! 1994! In this level Sarah guns down numerous security guards. Yes, security guards. Just guys guarding a construction site and whatnot. In the 1990's gamers wouldn't have even given this a second thought, but in 2025 it all seems pretty messed-up.
After literally murdering a bunch of guys who did nothing, now she's MURDERING DOGS.
This gets me into a Cyberdyne laboratory. Yanno, it never made much sense that Cyberdyne only has one laboratory. Them having another one in SF makes sense. It's well-guarded, with these giant electric traps.
Next boss: A swarm of SWAT team guys. The aiming feature works well for taking them all out as they emerge from doors.
This would be a good time to mention the game's one major weakness: The timer. That damn timer. They don't give you much time for each level. Of all the things to bring back from the 90's, they bring back level timers? It means you can't really slow down and enjoy the very good soundtrack, because you're always being rushed to the next stage.
Hey, John, dude, your mom's a psycho.
After getting past flame jets and murdering more computer company employees and their dogs, Sarah finally reaches...
...some sort of Proto-Skynet. At least I think so, it looks just like the Skynet Core in T2: The Arcade Game. Blast it for a while and avoid the laser defenses, and a weird message is displayed:
"TRANSFERRING DATA TO T-461"
What is this referring to? What's T-461? Clearly Skynet survived being destroyed by her here, by uploading itself into something else. Just weird that the game gives you a message about what that something else is, and it's something we've never heard of and will never actually see in the game.
Sarah finds a Proto-Terminator under development. This is the T-70 Terminator from T2 3D: Battle Across Time, the short film / theater attraction that is now long gone. Cool to see it make a cameo here. It's the most advanced terminator actually developed by Cyberdyne Systems in the series lore. Everything from here on out is developed by Skynet itself (while keeping the "Cyberdyne Systems" nomenclature)
Sarah goes all total psychopath on random guys who have no idea what she's talking about. I mean, she blew up a computer factory and SHOT A BUNCH OF PEOPLE, so... think about it from everybody else's perspective.
Next is the level I figured the game would start with: The Future War. Which means it's time for...
WEL-COME TO YOUR LIIIIIFE!
THERE'S NO TURNING BACK!
As if this wall boss wasn't Contra enough, the game gives you a damn Spread Gun.
WE WILL FIND YOU!
ACTING ON YOUR! BEST BEHAVIOR! TURN YOUR BACK ON MO-THER NATURE!
EVERY-BODY! WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD!
So what we see in this shot is the Laser weapon, which turns your purple plasma lasers into blue bolts that go through walls. There's also the Homing Gun, just to complete three out of five of the main series Contra weapons. No Crush Gun or Fireball Gun though. I'm shocked that they missed those while getting the other three weapons.
I've waited a long, long time to see the HK-Centurion get any respect, and it's featured as a major boss in both this game and the Terminator: Resistance game.
The thing about the Centurion is that originally it was supposed to lead the machine line in T2's opening scene. The third and deadliest variant of HK, scuttling along the ground like a giant terrifying spider. However, it was too difficult to get it working compared to the other HKs, and they had to put the idea aside. For a long time, it existed only in the screenplay of T2:
The front of it was specifically designed to resemble a "demonic face" according to James Cameron, with the searchlights being the eyes. The original designs for The Machines were done with "psychological warfare" in mind, i.e. terrifying their victims. Something that later Terminator properties all seemed to entirely miss. That Harvester thing in Salvation was pretty scary, though, especially if you actually think about what the Harvester was collecting people for.
It made a return to life in Terminator Resistance, a game way better than it had any right to be.
Anyway, back to this game.
NOTHING EVER LASTS FOREVER!
EVERY-BODY
WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD!
You play as John Connor in these future levels, and blast your way through overworld and underground areas. I appreciate them making the bunker-infiltrating incognito terminators look like regular people, while most 90's Terminator games just made them all Arnolds in leather jackets and sunglasses (as if any of that would happen)
Homing Gun, since it's the only one I haven't shown. These levels are pretty easy, because you have overwhelming firepower to rip apart everything in your path.
"With these weapons, I don't know."
The next boss fight is the T-47 mech, which as far as I can tell is an original creation from Terminator Resistance. Was never that into this, it looks like a pretty generic mech that could be from anything. Also the naming convention doesn't really make any sense. Should have an HK designation (HK-Walker, maybe?) rather than a T designation, and T-47 puts it way down below the T-70's Cyberdyne built. It's clearly a recent Skynet creation, so the name just doesn't make sense on any level.
Next boss is something we haven't seen in ANY Terminator properties, outside of maybe an early version in Terminator Salvation: The HK Bomber. It's like an Aerial HK, just much beefier and rains down various death. I think Salvation had one of these, a big HK that smaller HKs took off from. Hard to say, it's been a long time.
We see Kyle for a moment, as he discusses a serious matter with John over comms. I don't know, I always felt like this was an in-person discussion.
Long story short, John sends him back, knowing everything that it means.
THERE'S A ROOM WHERE THE LIGHT WON'T FIND YOU
HOLDING HANDS WHILE THE WALLS COME TUMBLING DOWN
WHEN THEY DO I'LL BE RIGHT BEHIND YOU
SO GLAD WE'VE ALMOST MADE IT
SO SAD THEY HAD TO FADE IT
EVERY
BODY
WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD
Finally, the actual movie starts. We get the iconic Biker Bar scene, which many video games tried to figure out a way to adapt despite Arnold's swinging dong.
Well, this game just goes "F it let's just do it" and you play as him in the buff. That's it. He's nood. What of it?
This level functions like a brawler / beat 'em up, with you moving around the screen throwing punches and taking out bar patrons. At the end is a boss fight with the bartender (the guy with the shotgun). He can't let you take the man's wheels, son.
Next level! John Connor fleeing from the T-1000 on a bike. This level is a direct copy of Turbo Tunnel from Battletoads, giving you obstacles in the road and whatnot that you need to respond to very quickly after a quick warning flashes onscreen. It's much easier than Turbo Tunnel, which is good because if he catches up...
Jesus Christ! The death animations in this game are brutal!
I love how this game re-creates scenes from T2, using 2D sprites, and it gets everything spot-on. Even small things like the timing are perfect.
Boss fight! You blast the truck while staying ahead of it and dodging obstacles. On Normal or higher, there are instant-death fences that pop up and need to be blasted; if you're in the middle of a firing animation when one pops up, you flat-out can't shoot it in time because of the shotgun-spin animation. So this is where my game ended on both of my runs at Normal mode. Restarted, now it's on Easy.
Next level: Mental Hospital. Sarah. 3 AM!
"Morning Doctor Silberman. How's the knee?"
Time for the Pogo track that got me back into Terminator, 15 years ago:
"Dude your mom's a psycho"
"What does that mean"
"Close the door"
This might be the best level in the game from a pure gameplay perspective. It uses a lot of stealth, with lots of nooks you can duck into. From there, you have to avoid the T-1000 while fighting your way through orderlies and picking locks. There are a few seriously scary moments, like this one where you get cornered. There's nowhere to go besides hiding, and the T-1000 walks right past you.
This game has completely avoided showing Arnold, and when it finally does, he's missing his face. It's a shame that they couldn't get the license to show Arnold in this game. Talk about a massive missing piece of the puzzle. You barely ever get to play as him either; in the main route, the only level where you play as Arnold is the biker bar of all things.
In any case, at this point you can choose to go kill Dyson, which results in a couple of new levels and a bad ending. However you can't make that choice until after the game is beaten and you replay it. In other words...you can't get the bad ending until after you get the good ending.
Another scene that they landed, spot-on. While Sarah sits around being miserable about the three billion lives or whatever, John and The Terminator have some bonding time.
Next up, the Miles Dyson chapter. Sarah spares him, and we're off to Cyberdyne. Killing him would probably have very little effect on anything; the company would just replace him and continue the same projects. Maybe they'd be set back a couple weeks, maybe months, while his team got caught up on the specific work he was doing on the CPU. She'd be killing a dad for absolutely nothing.
Cyberdyne level feels like a level from an NES game. You run back and forth down various hallways finding specific barrels and planting bombs on them. No big whoop.
What follows is another Turbo Tunnel esque level where you drive the SWAT truck, sometimes switching to Sarah as she blasts the T-1000 in a pursuing helicopter. Like most of the boss fights in this game, it's all about ducking behind cover and popping out to fire. Just like this scene in the movie.
Another great cutscene, with Arnold blasting the T-1000 with a Colt 629 CAR-15 he found on the dashboard.
Movie version. One of my favorite shots in the movie. As little as it accomplished, he blasted the hell out of the T-1000.
Of course, the iconic "Hasta La Vista" scene has to happen next.
The final level has you playing as Sarah again, escorting John through the molten factory and fending off various T-1000 attacks by blasting him. At one point you see him brawling with Arnold and the brawl is just like the movie (T-1000 morphs through itself, etc)
Super weird how you don't play as Arnold for any of this. At the very least I would expect a character select before these levels where you can choose between the two. It's like they intentionally de-emphasized him as much as possible, likely because of the inability to get his likeness.
Final "battle" has you blasting the T-1000 until it's one hit from the lava pit, then Arnold rolls up and fires the winning shot.
That's it for T-1000. So...if they hadn't ended up in a place with molten pools, how would they have ever actually killed the T-1000?
It's kinda like how Terminator Genisys happens to end in a place with a giant super-magnet that allows them to defeat the nanobot-swarm super-terminator. Which is still the only thing the series has come up with since T2 that was maybe an improvement on the T-1000 rather than a downgrade. And that's a maybe, it can be argued. Haven't seen Genisys enough to be able to say.
Speaking of Genisys, they did something interesting with the T-1000. Since they had to deal with it (in 1984 instead of the 90's, this time), they lured it into a pre-existing trap, a room filled with acid containers that could be blasted to rain down on it and disintegrate it. It worked perfectly and they had the T-1000 obliterated before too long. However, that was going off of the preparation of knowing what it was and that it would be there. Caught off-guard as they were in T2, they just lucked out ending up in a molten factory.
The devs of this game clearly spent a lot of time drawing the visuals from the movie, because they did a great job on these cutscene stills.
Arnold gets lowered into the lava, and there probably wasn't a dry eye in the theater in 1991. I don't know, I was a little kid and mostly wanted to know what all of the weapons were, especially the giant one. I was so disappointed to find out that they're called "Minigun" rather than something bad-ass.
School courses should be taught on what makes T2 good and how to capture it. Lord knows modern Hollywood writers need all the help they can get to make people Feel in the 2020's.
That's it for this game. Good game, very good, and long overdue. Is it $60 good? Not really, $20 would have made a lot more sense. Maybe $30 with all the extras.
Wait, the game isn't over? The next level is John Connor back in the future and we see him actually storming Skynet this time. A boss fight with an Aerial-HK (finally) comes and goes, then...
Another HK-Tank, this one much tougher than the earlier one because the screen autoscrolls (it's technically chasing you) and there are no walls to hide behind.
How do these things turn more than a slight degree, when the treads have that giant armor plating on the side? And what are those weird little T-Rex arms for?
John ends up in a Terminator Factory full of T-800s rolling off the presses, which leads to the final boss of all of Skynet-dom:
What in the blue fuck? It's the demon-spawn of the Giant Metal Spider from Final Fantasy 8 and the Guard Scorpion from Final Fantasy 7. THIS is the final boss of Skynet? It's an entirely original creation for this game, and it seems...out of place. Maybe this is the "T-461" that Skynet sent its data to in the past? Not like the name of the boss is onscreen, unfortunately.
Defeat it, and there's a second form where it chases you up a vertical hallway, because it wasn't disturbing enough the first time.
"Morning, Sarah."
It's a short game, very short. However there's a bit of replay value. There's a Boss Rush (not too bad), Infinite Mode (just walk down an endless hallway blasting enemies that spawn in, I fail to see the point), and an Arcade Mode (get through the entire game on one life, I sure couldn't do it, much less in the 15 minutes you need for a trophy)
Also, you can replay the main game and get the bad ending. There are technically two bad endings, and both of them stem from killing Dyson. Either send Arnold to do it, or do it yourself. So weird that this happens after finishing the game and getting the good ending.
John is shocked at his mom for capping Dyson. Not sure why he's surprised, she's been a complete psychopath for the entire game.
And that's pretty much it, the only "nexus point" that you can make different choices with. It's kind of an odd choice. Surely there were some other alternate-scenarios they could have played out elsewhere in the game instead of two basically-identical alternate routes revolving around Dyson.
That gets me to a new level, a police station where you murder tons of cops!
And another new level, where you (finally) play as Arnold and... murder tons of cops!
So the "kill Dyson" route is basically the same except with lots of murder?
Far as I can tell, you don't get any kind of trophy or anything for not hitting anyone during this minigame, so you can just BLAST EVERYTHING I GUESS IDK. This part really should have been in the main game (and penalized you for not walking away with zero Human Casualties). Why was the main path so allergic to any Arnold gameplay?
Two new boss fights in the bad ending routes. One is this SWAT truck that you just go toe to toe with using Arnold and his minigun.
Then we get a time-jump, with Old Sarah in the future doing Future War stuff to try to atone for how much she messed everything up by taking out Dyson. Cyberdyne finished his research, etc, and killing him did nothing to stop them, as I predicted.
The Future level ends with probably the hardest fight in the game, a battle with two T-808s. These things wield miniguns and can do a huge amount of damage while they walk around blasting. It's basically like fighting two of that kidnapping cartel guy early in the game, so hopefully by this point an hour later the audience has forgotten about all that.
Damn, was so close to getting the "all S rank" gold trophy that I figured was totally out of reach. This was my third run-through... and last one. Not sure what determines grade at the end of levels, or why I only get B for some.
THERE IS NO FATE BUT WHAT WE MAKE
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