Terminator 3: War of the machines

"Terminator 3: War of the machines" was a first-person shooter genre video-game based on the "Terminator" franchise, made for the PC-Windows platform[1]. The game was released on November 28th, 2003 to be the spin-off of the film "Terminator 3: Rise of the machines", released on July 2nd, 2003. The game was intended to be an extension of the movie and not its promotion, as it was released several months after the exhibition of the motion picture on movie theatres. Hollywood’s "Terminator" franchise turned out to be a great success, just like "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" (unlike its predecessors), earning 150 million dollars in domestic revenue, and 433 million dollars around the globe[2]. The game was a commercial flop, though (no public sales data is available). It reached position #17,416 in Amazon.com games sales rank[3], with an initial cost of 50 dollars and final purchase price of only 14 dollars, also being the last game developed by Clever’s Games[4].

This "Terminator" game follows a specific wave of first-person shooter “war games”. Its style closely resembles that of the well known and successful franchise "Battlefield 1942" (released in 2002), focused on team versus team online gameplay. For that reason, "Battlefield" is "Terminator's" main competitor, with a very positive sales result during the years of 2003 and 2004, when 3 million copies were sold [5] and the 10th position within NPD ranking was reached.

The other competitor was "Call of Duty", reaching the 8th position in the NPD report ranking[6], but this game is manly for single-person offline experience.

Graphics were disappointing, showing the producer’s lack of effort. This could be observed when some characters did not respond to shooting, they seemed to lack any animation response. Negative sound quality, that does not resemble the film, bad voice acting and boring repeating music. In addition, lack of single-player story, there is no story or screenplay, just random maps with “dumb” computer opponents. In regards to the gameplay aspect, "Terminator" is a bad "Battlefield" clone, with “generic weapons”, bugged maps and vehicles. The game was a “zero teamwork game”, which is pretty disappointing for a subgenre that focuses on multiplayer and team gameplay[7].

This game was just another copycat taking advantage of the film brand to sell itself

Gamespy reviewer says: “copycat game follows parts of the recipe, it misses a few major ingredients and undercooks the rest. The results taste terrible.”[8] Both Gamespy and Gamespot critics agree in saying that this "Terminator" game is a bad unfinished copy, giving a lower score of 2 out of 10 (Gamespot)[9].

The game lacks the support from Atari or Clever games to online gameplaying. Most servers were set up by players, there were no “public servers”. In addition, this game had engine software problems, constantly choking and staging.

In can be concluded that "Terminator: War of the Machines" is the perfect example of the common mistakes that can be present in a spin-off, usually lack of time to produce a revised product and lack of creativity, revealling the fact that the brand would have sold by itself.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_3:_War_of_the_Machines

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_3:_Rise_of_the_Machines

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Terminator-3-War-Machines-Pc/dp/B00009WDS9

[4] http://www.mobygames.com/company/clevers-games-ltd

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_1942

[6] http://www.xboxaddict.com/news/4311/2003-NPD-Group-Annual-Report-2003-U.S..html

[7] http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/review/915258.html

[8] http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/terminator-3-war-of-the-machines/6504p1.html

[9] http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/terminator3wotm