Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
In the late eighties and early nineties, if anyone said, “I'll be back” or “Come with me if you want to live,” there would be only one stone-jawed Austrian that came to mind: the one, the only, Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Whether out to destroy Sarah Connor or to save a stereotypical angst-ridden punk with attitude named John Connor, the T-800 “Terminator” was a badass, no questions asked.

Just as Hollywood does with every good franchise, the big wigs in Tinseltown felt the need to make another sequel almost a decade after the last one.  Usually that spells out disaster.  Now, bring in the fact that there is to be a game tied to the movie and as I mentioned earlier, you've got a disaster of biblical proportions.  Sure, the other movies had games with them, but that was in the age of 8 and 16-bit games.  Gamers were too focused with “blast processing” and the epic struggle between a plumber and a rodent to really    care about some third-party licensed game, even though some of the Terminator games during this time weren't all that bad.

In 2003, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines came to consoles everywhere.  No platform was safe, either.  From the Xbox to the Game Boy Advanced, anyone unfortunate enough to get their hands on this game was going to get a crash course in bad movie games.

While I'm sure I could speak volumes on why every iteration of this title is bad, the Xbox version is the one that I had the misfortune of playing.  Right off the bat, the first thing that comes to mind is “Wow, I thought this game was made in 2003.”  The game looks bad.  There's no two ways to cut it.  Granted, this is a last-gen game and today's gamer might be a bit spoiled, but this game just screams Nintendo 64.  From the horribly rendered and blocky character design to the sound direction, everything just reeks of the nineties -- and not in the good way.

The game is almost entirely a first person shooter and the controls make it almost impossible to really get a grasp of the game.  Movement is a chore in this title because somehow, a machine made completely of metal moves like an ice cube on a soapy linoleum floor.  Couple that with horrible targeting and hit-detection and suddenly you have a first person shooter that, quite frankly, should be taken out back.

The other part of the game is very Mortal Kombat-esque for the battles where the Terminator fights the new female robot named T-X.  The gameplay in these sections really just boil down to two or three hit combinations.  There's not very much to talk about in this aspect.

That's just the movement.  The actual game is pretty boring, to say the least.  To start off, the game is just too easy.  The Terminator can lock on to its enemies and dispatch them with whatever weapons available.  That part makes sense.  What doesn't make sense is the vast cache of weapons and fuel cells that just keep appearing out of nowhere.  I know it's a game but come on, Black Ops Entertainment!  Give the person playing your game a bit of a challenge!  

While the game's missions only seem to last for short periods of time, usually with either extremely obvious objectives or ridiculously vague ones, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines feels rushed.  It's a shame simply because the character is so badass.  Let's just hope for our sake, he won't be back