Unlike fellow sci-fi romp Alien, which re-earned its dribbling, gory limelight with Alien: Earth on Disney+ and the 2024 movie Alien: Romulus, James Cameron’s Terminator franchise has been quietly rusting away for thirty years.
In truth, the series hasn’t seen much luck since the second instalment, Judgment Day, back in 1991, four sequels up the convoluted timeline.
Terminator: Dark Fate
Terminator’s video game treatments have fared better. Six years on from the poorly-reviewed Terminator: Dark Fate (2019), which had been intended to start a trilogy with part of the original cast (Arnie, Linda Hamilton), games might even renew interest in the forlorn hopes of killer robots.
First, Terminator: Survivors hopes to carve itself a part of the online survival genre, while Terminator 2D: No Fate targets gamers’ newfound love of side-scrolling beat-’em-ups.
Things have got a mite more mechanical, too, in Terminator 2 roulette. This themed variant of the ball and wheel game has become popular with those who play roulette online, as it includes clips from the iconic 1991 movie and a familiar red and blue theme. It’s otherwise a standard rendition of the game, albeit with multipliers and prize boosters that are uncommon to the conventional roulette format.
Perhaps most significantly, it’s a reminder of the continuation of the franchise years beyond the disappointment of Dark Fate.
No Fate
Terminator 2D: No Fate continues a trend started around the time Streets of Rage 4 debuted (2020), bringing a retro revival that bore Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, Double Dragon Gaiden, and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind.
Reviews from said retro revival have been mixed, but an early look at No Fate from PCGaming suggests it could be the best game in the Terminator canon “since the Genesis” – or the Mega Drive days in the UK. It seems to be a shot-by-shot tribute to Terminator 2, featuring all the original characters.
Sarah Connor must escape the asylum, and John must evade the menacing T-1000 with the help of the now-outdated T-800. There’s even a set-piece involving the motorcycle chase and the truck diving from the highway.
Terminator has generally coasted on film tie-in games, with one released after each mainline film since 1984. An FPS title, Terminator: Resistance, launched in 2019. Again, though, reviews were mixed.
Post-Apocalyptic Motif
Terminator: Survivors, due out in 2025, enters a difficult landscape populated by titans of the survival genre – Rust, Valheim, DayZ, and ARK: Survival Evolved. It ostensibly picks up where these games currently are, adding the Terminator brand to an online co-op experience.
Craft, fight, build, etc. – it’s a tired genre, and the trailers have shown little footage so far, especially for a game due out in 2025.
Survivors’ publisher Nacon is behind the recent (2023) RoboCop: Rogue City, but is generally known for its niche sports games – cycling, rugby, and Aussie rules – and Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator.
There’s little else known about Terminator: Survivors, other than the fact that it entered development in 2022 and suffered a delay to its release shortly after. Red flags aside, the Terminator franchise suits the post-apocalyptic motif, so it could be the genre mash-up fans have been looking for.
“I’ll be back”, Arnie once said. Yet, he hasn’t gone away yet.
