SkyNET Review

Those pesky Terminators are up to no good again!

SkyNET follows the popular Terminator plot line where computers with thinking minds were created by Cyberdyne, and now find people inferior and target them for death. This time, the Terminators have obtained a Haties nuclear missile and are preparing to launch it at the Los Angeles area. You must find out their plans through mission based levels. Unlike Quake, where you come in to a level mysteriously, kill all the monsters, and exit, SkyNET actually makes sense. You drive into the city in your jeep, find the building you're supposed to infiltrate, enter through the roof, find out the information you need, go to the roof of the building, and get picked up in a helicopter. It's so realistic that it makes the missions really intriguing, instead of simple gore fests where a quick trigger finger is all that matters. Hiding behind rubble, cars, building, and other objects is imperative to playing this game. Thought is more important in SkyNET than in all the other first person shooters out there put together.

In most first person games, you're enclosed in a dungeon, movie theater, or a castle, but in SkyNET, you adventure through places as diverse as the streets of Los Angeles, submarines, deserts, missile silos, and deserted highways. By using Bethesda's new XnGine, the environments are realistically drawn in either low 320x200 resolution, or the beautiful high 640x480 resolution. Those people just wanting more ways to destroy their opponents won't be disappointed with SkyNET either. It has 17 weapons! There are 5 different tossable bombs, 5 laser weapons, and an assortment of projectile firing weapons. You'll need to figure out the right weapon or combination of weapons to use on each robot.

Besides just walking around, SkyNET also lets you use two different vehicles. You can ride in your jeep while trying to escape from the Terminator base, or you can use your flying Hunter/Killer to quickly reach the missile silo before launch. Both of the vehicles are equipped with missiles and lasers. It's really fun to run over Terminators at 60 miles per hour...

Also included is multi-player network ability. You can play eight players over a network or two players over the modem. Choose between eight different characters to control ranging from a Terminator to several human resistance fighters. The different vehicles in the game really spice up the multi-player games. The only thing more satisfying than running over a Terminator in a Jeep is running over your best friend.

Although the game was difficult, I was disappointed with it's longevity. It only has a total of eight levels, each with different objectives, that will give you at least 15 hours of play. It's a great single player game, but just doesn't last long enough.

The sounds in the game seem like they are just out of the movie. The rat-tat-tat of the machine guns and the explosions of the Molotov cocktails just sound superb. The MIDI music is a suspenseful score that isn't overpowering but also isn't very amazing either.

The animations between levels are fairly cool, but some of them look a little fake. The briefings that are done with Full Motion Video using actors are really hokey. The acting for some of the characters is so ridiculous it almost looks like a comedy. You'll still want to watch them though, not only for the laughs, but also for the revealing of the plot. Bethesda did a much better job with the acting in Daggerfall. To make a long story short: SkyNET is an intelligent mission based game with good graphics, and it's share of both action and puzzles. It is extremely realistic in comparison to other first person shooters and is really worth checking out, especially for fans of the Terminator storyline.