GDC Terminator: Salvation Preview Round 2

Katrina "ShadokatRegn" Pawlowski March 30th, 2009 at 3:38 PM

The GDC in San Francisco gave IGN.com a nice, specific and updated preview of Terminator: Salvation, set to be released on most platforms (no Handheld AI apocalypse for us) along with the film in May. This preview confirms the local co-op we already knew about, but with a bit of disappointing news for the online gamer.

"Yep, Terminator Salvation features split-screen couch co-op. Unfortunately, online co-op can't be included, because the machines own the Internets."

Hilary Goldstein of IGN.com goes in to quite a bit of the detail about the gameplay, revealing a third person shooter in the general vein of Gears of War. As such, taking cover is very important, especially with considerably less armor than the Machines. In this case, however, taking cover is more difficult with machines destroying whatever you hide behind, and they'll attack from every direction with very few weak points.

"Unless you've gotten hold of grenades or a rocket launcher, you're not going to be able to do anything to their armored sections. In fact, your reticule won't turn red unless you can actually do damage to a machine. To make things just a bit tougher, machines such as the crab-like T-7-T actually seem aware of the fact that they can take on your measly bullets. You'll need to use your friend (or rely on your AI-controlled squadmates) to draw a T-7-T's attention and then flank them to get to their unprotected side. But several times during my hour-long play-session, the T-7-T seemed to recognize what I was attempting and would adjust its positioning just to make my job a little tougher."

Having a local co-op buddy seems essential for this game, especially since your health has no regeneration items or magical "flex your muscles to make it all better." If you, John Connor, fall, the human race is doomed. Blair Wilson, your player two, has the ability to revive John, and vice versa in the Co-op mode, should the Machines get the best of a situation. Online co-op would be useful for most gamers, but I suppose we'll have to make due with what we have.

Also, for those curious about which part of the ever-changing Terminator time line the game fits in to, this should help.

"Judgment Day has come and gone. The film takes place a decade after Skynet began its war against the populace and the events of the game take place two years prior to the movie (feel free to do the math). In its early nuclear strikes against humanity, Skynet damaged part of itself and has spent the past few years gaining enough strength to put an end to air-breathers."

Source: Link