Terminator 2D: NO FATE Review (Switch)

Are you old enough to remember being a kid and seeing a NES, Super Nintendo, or Mega Drive game of a licensed movie, and having your imagination run wild as to all the playable scenarios potentially contained within? If the answer is 'yes', then you’re equally likely to remember the actual experience typically being rushed, poorly coded junk that barely resembled the material upon which it was based.

But, in an alternate timeline, UK developers Mike Tucker and Matthew Cope would grow up to form a future resistance in 2016 under the moniker Bitmap Bureau (Xeno Crisis, Final Vendetta). Their mission: return to the early '90s to create the 16-bit movie licensed game kids always dreamed of, before travelling back to 2025 to correct the past and save the world. Confused? Wait until you find out who the dad is.

Terminator 2D: NO FATE is that game: prophesied to say "hasta la vista" to the memory of LJN and its Skynet-like destruction of movie licenses. It recreates Cameron's action spectacular right down to the tiniest of details, forging it into the 2D gaming adventure it was destined to be.

What I value about Bitmap Bureau is that it always aims squarely for the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive game that never was. Terminator 2D’s entire design feels born out of an alternate timeline, like a genuine 16-bit companion to the movie’s 1991 release.

There are two starting modes and several locked bonuses, including a Boss Rush and an Infinite Mode. Story Mode is stuffed with cutscenes taken from the movie's sequences, with text outlining the narrative. It’s also a longer game, in that it’s bookended with stages that occur before and after the events of the movie, having Sarah Connor first retrieve a kidnapped John from a Mexican cartel, before breaking into Cyberdyne Research. This actually alludes to what John Connor tells his friend early in the film: that his mother was arrested trying to recover something she believes to be hidden within Cyberdyne's lab.

From there, you leap to the future war, playing adult John as he faces off against the machines, and the epilogue ensures there’s a climactic finale beyond Arnie's 'thumbs-up' farewell. As Bitmap Bureau isn’t restricted to following the movie’s blueprint in these original stages, they're actually some of the best: freer in design, more creatively bold, and teeming with colossal machine bosses.

In Story Mode you only have one life and four continues, but can greatly increase their stock by finding special icons throughout the campaign. With a generous life bar and liberally distributed health icons, it’s surprisingly easy on defaults — especially so when compared to Bitmap Bureau's infamously brutal Xeno Crisis. Seasoned gamers will likely finish it in just a few attempts, but tweaking the difficulty up from "No Problemo" to "Hasta La Vista" adds in additional enemies, rearranges some objects, and makes the time limit more pressing.

Finishing Story Mode once opens up new paths with new stages and characters to play, triggered at choice-based junctures. Will you off Miles Dyson in front of his family? Or will you install Arnie’s skull chip and finally get your hands on that Minigun? It’s an idea that greatly improves replay value, especially since the alternate routes are altogether awesome, and it takes the total number of stages to at least 16, as far as we can gather.

Arcade Mode, while equally soft enough to beat, requires you do so on one life and no continues. It’s also shorter, cutting out the precursor stages and cutscenes to focus only on the movie-related parts, making for a brisk, exciting experience. And, if you’re struggling to nail a particular stage, there’s a Practice Mode to help out.

The soundtrack is superb, blending those classic Terminator musical motifs into all-new mixes, and graphically it’s very impressive. The capturing of the movie’s characteristics is applause-worthy: fans will be grinning ear to ear and end to end as it works through every set-piece and minute detail in grand 2D style. The recreation of even the smallest of particulars is superb, from that burning tyre that rolls out of the post-aqueduct explosion, to the T-1000 getting Hasta La Vista’d into liquid nitrogen chunks. It’s all so thoughtfully reproduced, there must be an award in here somewhere for movie-license accuracy.

The sprite work, though, is a touch stilted in places. Most enemies look fine, collapsing to the ground fluidly when shot, but the human-sized guard dogs are just strange. Sarah Connor can’t bend her knees much and her gait appears stiff. And, while the giant, towering future war Hunter Killer machines and gunships look fantastic, we would have liked the emblematic T-800 endoskeletons to have had a little more presence and threat. It’s a mixed bag that mostly ranges from sufficient to great, and it’s a minor criticism in a game where tight controls gloss over any aesthetic dips. It’s just surprising that, with an art team capable of feats like animating the T-1000’s entire lava-death transformation, some of the sprites appear, well, slightly robotic.

Stages are piece by piece constructed from the movie’s sequences, and it’s all action all the way. There’s no faffing about collecting coloured keycards here: it’s all gunning, lobbing grenades, barging, punching and driving. Much of the game plays like Contra, with 8-way directional fire and a useful slide attack, but different characters have different moves depending on the scenario.

When Sarah is breaking out of prison (one of the more difficult stages in the game), she only has bare feet, a nightstick, and a lock-picking mechanic; but when she goes militaristic, planting bombs in Cyberdyne’s HQ, she can wield certain enemies as human shields and slide kick falling debris into encroaching assailants. In the famous “Your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle” sequence, you play naked Arnie in a simplistic beat-'em-up-inspired stage, roughing up bikers to the film’s actual background music (make sure you destroy that Jukebox!). Elsewhere, you race down the aqueduct as John, before switching to a shotgun-strapped Schwarzenegger to shoot out chain-link fences.

So much from the movie is present, in fact, I only lamented not getting to evade the T-1000 through a giant '90s arcade centre. Well, that and the fact Schwarzenegger's likeness couldn't be acquired for the game (but there are some clever workarounds).

In an odd way, Terminator 2D is so thorough in tracing the movie’s sequences that it almost doesn’t feel like a game in the traditional sense. Every stage is different, piecemeal, with clever gameplay implementations that make each feel unique — but it’s extraordinarily linear on the whole. Most stages take less than three minutes to beat, and go by in a flash once you know the layout. There is the odd hidden item to find just off the beaten path, and whether taking cover behind walls to avoid a laser barrage or triggering traps to catch the T-1000 in machine assemblies, it’s plenty of fun to learn.

At the same time, it’s more a series of endearing movie vignettes than a full-blown game in the traditional sense. By sticking to the source material so exactingly, it limits itself in scale, more akin to a compilation of arcade-like bonus games than a series of fully-articulated stages.