Terminator 2D: No Fate Review (PS5)

Terminator 2: Judgement Day is one of those pop culture moments that may never fully die off.

Since 1991, it's been endlessly referenced in all kinds of ways, and is probably the biggest reason why the series has gotten as many other movies and television shows as it has.

The strength of that one film has endured long enough that Terminator 2D: No Fate can be made, totally focused on nostalgia almost 35 years later, and it feels like it transports you back to the early 90s.

This is an arcade action game with pixelated graphics that really feels like it was taken straight from the SEGA Genesis in all of the best ways.

You cycle between playing as Sarah Connor, John Connor (in the future), and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 in various levels that commonly involve you mowing down all kinds of enemies with your endless firing.

For the most part, you’re going to be doing a lot of firing. A large majority of the 15 levels here are side-scrollers that have enemies and hazards in them that you need to get by by simply hurling a ton of bullets their way. There’s no ammo restriction outside of throwable grenades, so just go wild.

This gameplay is incredibly simple and feels like it was taken straight out of an arcade game. It’s enjoyable running around as a one-man killing machine until you eventually run into a boss that requires you to temporarily dodge attacks and then hold down the fire button again.

Of the three characters, John’s future sections are the most fun.

These levels are the only time you can pick up upgrades for your gun that give you Contra-like buffs, like a beam or spread shot. They are time-limited, but you can use them to quickly get through a pack of enemies.

The one downside here is that the upgrades are placed in each level and not randomly dropped from enemies, so they're for specific sections.

But the game does mix things up every now and then, even though not every experiment pays off.

Your first exposure to the T-800 has a naked Schwarzenegger beating up bikers in a bar, but the fist combat here is not nearly as good as the shooting combat in other areas.

If you're not a fan of beat-em-ups that need you to be on the same exact level as the person you are trying to punch, you’ll run into a little frustration here. Luckily, it is only one level that you deal with that, so it's over in less than five minutes.

The vehicle sections overall are pretty fun, though. When you're being chased, the game takes on a Battletoads-like section that isn’t nearly as bad as its inspiration.

You have to use the warning prompts on screen to choose a lane to avoid the oncoming traffic, and sometimes you have to shoot back at your pursuer. These areas of the game can test your reflexes, which is quite an enjoyable mix-up compared to the rest of the game.

One of the more surprising aspects of Terminator 2D: No Fate is that it has a few sections that can split off into new stories. Unfortunately, the game locks you out of being able to choose these new story paths until you've beaten the campaign.

The first run will probably only take a couple of hours, with our fastest run through the story being about 40 minutes, but it's still quite annoying to be given a choice to make during the story and then be railroaded into following the movie path for no good reason. There's also no level select, so if you want to find those branching areas, you need to start from the beginning.

This game isn’t afraid to make you earn your way to unlock things. Something as simple as a cheat menu requires you to beat the game on the hardest difficulty. To get that harder difficulty, you have to play through the game in its normal path, the multiple different alternate paths, and a mode called Mother of the Future.

So, the game is short, but it asks you to replay a lot of the same stuff if you want to unlock new content.