The title screen allows one to select Training mode, save and load features, and difficulty levels (Easy and Medium, with the more difficult level, "Terminal", to be unlocked by your future successes) as well as the usual option menus. You are Sergeant Kyle Reese (you remember him, right?) in the initial missions and your tasks are neatly summed up in a check-box-type screen that details exactly what you need to accomplish to get to the next level. Along the way, tasks might be added and your screens will be updated accordingly. It's a nice feature to be able to take a quick peek at what you have accomplished and what you have yet to do, despite the fact that the missions are repeated ad nauseum over ten levels with three characters who all play about the same despite having different builds and features.

Terminator's gameplay is where the real suffering begins. There are much better games to get in this genre, and this title doesn't measure up to its competition. The enemies are slow and have the AI of a grapefruit (and that's insulting the grapefruit, trust me). Yeah, there are varying weapons and lots of ammunition to fire, but that gets old very quickly. Coupled with a few C4 placing missions, there isn't much to this game beyond picking up health packs and ammo and tirelessly hammering hundreds of Terminators into oblivion. Therein lies the first problem with Dawn of Fate, before we even begin to assess its play mechanics. Terminators are supposed to be a bitch to kill, not something to be mowed down like a nice sod lawn on a Sunday afternoon. You can actually kick(!) a Cyberdyne systems T800 into submission or beat him with 5-10 punches, kicks, and swats to his body. Call me crazy, but I thought it was far more difficult than that. Aside from this, the camera that follows you around feels like it's four years old, unpolished, and highly suspect. You'll find yourself moving in a certain direction and then the camera suddenly shifts and you're wandering back from whence you came despite never having moved off the control stick - à la a worse Devil May Cry.

Furthermore, the environments can be maddening at times when you're trying to get an ammo power up and there's no way to get it regardless of how you try to maneuver. Equally distressing are areas that are so dark that you can't possibly ascertain which way to go without succumbing to trial-and-error and tirelessly bumping into walls. In certain missions it's your objective to guide a demolition expert through an area and keep him alive for the length of the mission. However, why your character can use health packs until the cows come home but your partner can't is truly a mystery. It's not all bad though - hopping behind the enemy line and shooting at ships and Terminators from a standstill position is very cool with the huge Turret Gun that actually overheats if you don't give it a rest. Still, the entire game leaves one with the taste that if only they had done it right this would've been a classic.

Granted, the sets and environments are very cool and some of the large machines that you're fighting against are rendered with equal care. The cinematic sequences are top notch and very faithful to their predecessors. For this reason alone I suggest that fans of the series at least rent Dawn of Fate to run through it and see the footage. Paradigm obviously spent a lot of time on these bits and they are rewarding. But, the "lesser" graphical elements aren't nearly as polished, starting with the enemy that you'll be facing the most, the T800. The character model for these are awful and should have been far better considering how much time you spend viewing them. They also seem to stall in certain areas and just stop firing and walking as if there's no method to their madness. The attention paid to lighting and other areas make it puzzling why more time wasn't spent on these. Dawn of Fate also supports anamorphic wide-screen televisions, for those of you with 16x9 aspect ratio televisions.

The sound, on the other hand, uses both original soundtrack elements and compositions along with scores from the film. This serves to enhance the feeling of intermeshing with the movies and places you in the environment. There is substantial use of human voice as well, from the characters that you interact with and from instructions that you're following from command control. For technophiles, Dolby Surround Pro Logic II is the highest level of audio supported by Dawn of Fate.

Believe me, I'd rather have given this game a much more positive spin being that I'm a huge fan of the films and the premise behind the series. As a game, especially for those that haven't seen the movies or aren't particularly fans of them, I can't say that this game is anything more than a less than average adventure game. I'll reiterate that fans of the series should rent it before plunking down the change to own it. Unfortunately, this title shares something in common with many games based on films over the years: it just doesn't measure up and falls short of what it should have - could have - been.

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· · · Haohmaru