It's a funny thing, I've never played a Terminator game that was any good. So my expectations for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, by Black Ops Entertainment, were considerably low. Unfortunately, my expectations were pretty much what we got. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines suffers severe gameplay and mechanics problems that hamper the possibility of a fun experience at every turn.

Judging the graphical quality of T3 is a tough call, at least in the first section of the game which occurs in the future. When you arrive in the present, the truth becomes painfully clear. The graphics seem jaggy, the textures seem gritty, and most of the characters move like stiff robots. Well, the first part of the game takes place in the future in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles where humans are fighting machines. So while you have this sense that something isn't quite up to par with these graphics, it's easily written off as appropriate for the setting. The problem is once you reach the present day and begin fighting in parks against human beings, there's not really a vast improvement in graphic quality or animation. Originally the developers wanted the game released around the time of the movie, however they delayed the game several months to ensure quality graphics. Clearly something went horribly wrong.

In contrast, the quality of the sound effects is pretty good. Plenty of machine noises, audio cues, and laser fire keep things interesting. Due to the nature of the graphics, it's frequently hard to discern what's going on, and audio cues will inform you of just what's hiding behind that rafter or up on that catwalk. The music is, for the most part, forgettable, and they don't make enough use of well-known music from the movies.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story behind the Terminator movies, here's a brief synopsis. Mankind makes a machine AI network called Skynet that unleashes nuclear Armageddon on mankind. Skynet then begins sending machines called Terminators back in time to kill the leader of the remaining human resistance, John Conner. The human resistance always manages to send back someone or something to help protect John Conner. In Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines you control the Terminator that will be sent back to protect John for the third time, and, in case you didn't know, that Terminator is Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The game begins when the human resistance finishes programming the Terminator to fight on their side. The first portion of the game takes place in the future as you work your way toward the Skynet time machine to travel back in time. Unfortunately, your progress towards this objective is never, ever, very clear. The future segment basically consists of various missions in different parts of post-apocalyptic L.A. Sadly these different missions lack any sort of narrative cohesion to link them together. It feels far more like random miscellaneous missions than it does a progressive trek towards some goal.

The core gameplay itself is pretty typical of most first person shooters. You go around picking up guns and ammo and shoot the bad guys. There is never any interesting twist or spin put on the gameplay. Aside from the existence of missions, which are never really more involved than 'get here' or 'blow these guys up', the gameplay is pretty much just like Doom and Quake which, at this point is pretty boring. The only break from this is the infrequent 1-on-1 brawls that ensue between you and the T-X sent back to kill John. Sadly you and your opponent fight like slow, clumsy robots. It's true they are robots, but I'm not sure the T-X, or even Arnold for that matter, ever moved this stiffly. In any event, just because it's 'accurate' doesn't mean its fun.

It's not all bad though. The game does include an absolutely huge number of extras. Deleted scenes, CG cutscenes, scenes from the movie, demos, etc. It almost justifies buying the game, if not for the fact that I'm sure the Terminator 3 DVD prolly has some of this stuff too.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines has the worst sort of difficulty you can find. Any difficulty you can find is found not in the gameplay, but in irritating mechanics that serve only to frustrate and never to challenge. Take the targeting system, for example. More often then not it will never target what you want, and if you're surrounded by large groups of enemies, you can quickly die in the time it takes to get the right enemy targeted. Another extremely frustrating aspect is the amount of ammo it can take to kill enemies. Sometimes one shot would make an enemy soldier explode. Other times I would have to unload two or three clips at the exact same type of enemy before they would die. It was inexplicable.

The problems don't end there, though. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is filled with small little issues that ruin it. The worst culprit of all is probably the ridiculously long time it takes to change weapons. Unless you press the change weapon buttons extremely fast, you'll put away and take out each of the guns in-between the one you're using and the one you want. Some of these guns, such as a certain rocket launcher, take an extremely long time to take out and put away.

Another problem is that using continue places you right at the spot you died, rather than a safe location some distance away. This causes some wasted continues. There are also some tight corners where it is very easy to get stuck and you can become extremely disoriented trying to get out. To put a final nail in the coffin, the game has issues with freezing up. It doesn't happen 'terribly' often, but it happened at least once to just about everyone who played it.

It would seem the Terminator franchise is cursed when it comes to video games. While this is the first one to use Arnold's voice and likeness, it doesn't seem like it was enough to stave off the inevitable suckiness that comes with every Terminator game.