While it's not the prettiest game on the market, Terminator: Dawn of Fate is still able to pull off a look that portrays a bleak and dirty future. It's all about style points here, with the humans in their broken and battered BMX style armor and locations that are burnt up and torn apart. The endos (that's short for endoskeletons for you non-hardcore fans out there), on the other hand, don't look anything like their movie counterparts. Instead of shiny metallic skeletons, these hunks of junk look more like Johnny-5 with legs. Most of the enemies you fight are dirty piles of scrap, with Hunter Killers and those giant treaded tanks rarely making an appearance.

Audio-wise, though, the game stays true to the movie. First and foremost is the music, which has that same the-future-looks-bleak-techno-style to it. The sound effects are equally impressive, with trademark laser-gun effects and explosions.

Taking after the first movie, Terminator: Dawn of Fate is strictly an action game, with a couple of light puzzles thrown in here and there. But for the majority of the time, you're going to be wielding a plasma rifle in the 40-watt range, manning turret guns, and wreaking general chaos wherever you go.

The story in Dawn of Fate precedes the first movie, ending where The Terminator began. Most of the time you'll be controlling Kyle Reese, the man that John Connor sent back in time to save his mother so he could be born (we won't get into the paradox here). You'll get to take control of some other characters as well, but only for a couple of missions.

Each level has you completing a series of tasks, which usually consist of you going somewhere and destroying something. There is the occasional rescue mission, and a couple of situations where you have to man a stationary gattling gun, but besides that, mission variety is surprisingly limited. Destroying wave after wave of machines has its moments, but for the non-hardcore fans, it will get a little tedious after a while. Bosses, at least, add a little variety, and boss fights are different enough to matter. Unfortunately, you only get to fight one Arnold style terminator. For a game that is made after The Terminator, you'd think they would include more of what the fans would want.

At the end of each mission, you are awarded a number of SkyNet Tech Points. These points can be spent on upgrades, like better armor or increased health benefits. This, along with the adrenaline system, is the game's saving grace. The adrenaline system is based around how many adrenaline points you have. Every time you kill an enemy, you get more points. By switching your adrenaline on, you can turn your character into a machine-killing........machine. Not only will you aim better, but if you are fighting hand to hand with your cattle-prod-stick-of-death, you can finish your moves in Hollywood-style slow motion. If James Cameron isn't proud of that, he should be.

With varying levels of difficulty, nobody should find a style of gameplay they can't master. There are some moments where you'll at first be overwhelmed, but if you dig in and fight like a true member of the resistance, you should come out on top, albeit not unscathed.

The most difficult part of Terminator, and also the part that manages to shoot the game in the foot, is the control and camera scheme. Shooting, switching weapons, pulling switches, and moving around within one scene is easy as pie. But when you try to go somewhere, and you run through five different camera angles in under two seconds, changing your direction of control every time, the flow of the game hits a brick wall. This is one of the worst control implementations I have ever seen. There are plenty of other, better control systems out there, leaving little room for excuse.

If it wasn't for this shoddy camera and control system, Terminator: Dawn of Fate would have done much better. Better variety and improved graphics could also have helped a lot, but in the end, there was only one thing that killed it. Die-hard fans will still want to check it out, though they may want to rent it first.