What is Terminator: Resistance?

Terminator: Resistance is a single-player first-person shooter with genuine RPG bones, developed by Teyon and released in 2019. It drops you into a post-apocalyptic 2028 Los Angeles as Jacob Rivers, a freshly orphaned private whose entire Pacific Division has just been wiped out by a new breed of Infiltrator unit that can perfectly mimic human beings. From there you fall in with a ragtag group of survivors, scavenge burnt-out city blocks, hack Skynet terminals, craft ammo and pipe bombs, pick locks, invest ability points into skill trees, and slowly work your way toward John Connor's resistance. Think budget Fallout, except the wasteland glows blue and the apex predators are chrome. Here is what Teyon quietly nailed: the early-game power fantasy is completely absent, and that absence is the point. Terminators in the first half of the campaign are genuinely terrifying. You sneak around them in darkened hospitals, you watch comrades get executed while you crouch helpless behind cover, you distract with thrown objects and pray the detection cone does not sweep your way. Those sections carry real dread, the kind the Cameron films bottled so well. The game also features multiple endings, branching dialogue with the survivor group, and relationship mechanics that shift story outcomes, so your choices do carry some weight, even if the writing itself is not exactly Disco Elysium-tier. The licensed score weaves in Brad Fiedel's original Terminator theme with fresh instrumentation, and it lands every time. Unfortunately, the back half of the campaign largely undoes that early tension. Once plasma weaponry enters the picture, T-800s stop feeling like apex hunters and start feeling like slow bullet sponges. The skill tree and crafting system, while present, never develop enough mechanical depth to reward genuine build theorycrafting past the midgame. Voice acting ranges from serviceable to noticeably rough, human NPC models have a rubbery quality that has become something of a community in-joke, and the AI is inconsistent enough that a determined speed-runner could bypass most confrontations entirely. Side missions occasionally tip into basic fetch-quest territory, which this reviewer has zero patience for in any RPG, post-apocalyptic or otherwise. What saves Resistance from being a write-off is exactly what makes it charming: it reads as a passion project from people who genuinely love the source material. The attention to franchise-specific detail is real, from Terminator-vision degrading with static as you take damage, to Easter eggs scattered across levels for fans who know where to look. Steam players handed it very positive user reviews on PC, which tells you something critics sometimes miss: the audience this game is actually for tends to come away satisfied. It is not a technically impressive game, and its RPG systems are wider than they are deep, but it clears the bar it set for itself with enough sincerity to matter. If you can stomach budget-tier presentation and a second act that loses its nerve, Resistance delivers something rare for licensed games: a story that respects the mythology and actually connects you to its characters, even when those characters are wearing lab coats on active recon missions.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

Be the first to comment on What is Terminator: Resistance?.