The story plays in 2016, two years before the new movie. Judgment Day has come and gone, its trailers after eight years still clearly visible, endoskeletons are searching through the ruins of Los Angeles for human resistance and hope this way to end all of humanity. You, as foot soldier, try to end this but the military action to take down Skynet failed. Several units are now spread out between the ruins with ruthless T-versions on their heels. Helping your fellow resistance fighters becomes a struggle for life.

The new Terminator: Salvation will be a typical third-person shooter with the known cover system and it quickly became clear the makers have taken over the basic principles from their other game, Wanted: Weapons of Fate. Another thing that we immediately noticed is the quite linear environment, no side quests just straight to the point action. During the many fights, the linearity does tend to blur and you start to feel like the action is playing around the main character. Enemies will flank you, shoot your cover or go for full frontal assault. Taking cover is not an option.

Another popular trend Terminator Salvation follows is the addition of a team mate, in this case Blair. Teamplay is the key element in the entire game as an enemy you'll often encounter, the T-7-T, is only vulnerable from behind. One of you will therefore have to draw the robot's attention while the other needs to find a good place to fire from while running from one cover to the other. The team mate AI is still failing here and there at the moment though. We noticed that often the same position is chosen eventhough it isn't helping for a fight.

Those that hear the word team mate will probably immediately think of co-op gameplay. After all, the human brain is still the strongest to flank an enemy. Getting rid of Terminators is perfectly possible through split-screen but not online. Due to too little development time the makers couldn't create a perfectly finished multiplayer and therefore decided to temporarily bury the option. Depending on the success of the game it may become available later on as downloadable content though.