Terminator: Rampage is a First-Person Shooter developed by Bethesda, based on the Terminator franchise, though it follows a standalone storyline unrelated to the movies or other games.
In 2024, human resistance led by John Connor managed to sabotage a Skynet base in the Cheyenne Mountains, one developing a powerful computer core known as the Meta-Node which can create and manufacture it's own Terminator army remotely. To prevent the humans from obtaining the Meta-Node, Skynet decides to send it back to the past.
Arriving in 1984 in the Gobi Desert, the Meta-Node made it's way to the Skynet desert facility, then still under the control of humans, and begins assimilating machines for manufacturing it's own private robot army, in an attempt to bring Judgement Day a decade ahead of schedule. It's up to you, a lone commando under John's command, to go on a solo mission to 1984 to stop the Meta-Node.
The game was released in 1993 for the DOSBox.
One Hell of a Way to Start a Mission...
- Alternate Universe: A standalone game disconnected to the movie series. Expectedly, the good ending where the player destroys the Meta-Node leads to him becoming Brother Chuck and was never mentioned for the remaining franchise.
- Attack Drone: The Seeker-class robots, floating spherical orbs with a single red eye who can stun you from up close, and it's brethren the Skinner-drones with turrets attached to it's wings.
- Big Bad: The Meta-Node assumes this role for the game instead of Skynet, where the latter turns out to be the Greater-Scope Villain.
- Chicken Walker: Meta-guards, huge bipedal robots lumbering around on two bent legs. Oddly enough they look more like something the ED-209 than anything from Terminator canon (does Skynet have a backdoor deal with OCP? That explains a lot).
- Covers Always Lie: The game's cover art (pictured above) was supposedly Meta-Node's final form which it assumes to battle you as a boss in the last stage. Except the version of Meta-Node as depicted still retains organic parts and partial human features, when in the game when fought as a boss the Meta-Node is 100% mechanical and robotic.
- Cyber Cyclops: One Skynet minion exclusive to this game only, the Meta-borg mooks are robots with a single visor with a red light as it's eye.
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: There's a mini-screen on the bottom right that provides an overhead layout of the level you're currently in, and registers enemies as dots. It even briefly turns into a picture of the enemy if you're under attack.
- Game-Over Man: Running out of lives leads to a cutscene where you get blasted apart by Skynet's forces, flopping upon a wall as the machines riddles you with bullets. Then, to rub in the sodium chloride, you're treated to another FMV of Los Angeles getting vaporized by nukes as Skynet triumphs over mankind. And then a grinning T-100 skull fills the screen with the world a wasteland in the background.
- Gatling Good: The HK-95 mini-cannon, an automated gatling gun that fires fully-automatic and saws enemy robots into scrap.
- Keystone Army: Destroying Meta-Node's final form leads to the entire base's self-destruction and the base's robots shutting down.
- Mecha-Mooks: You're fighting Skynet, and expectedly all onscreen mooks are machines and robots. Expectedly, the T-800 from the films appears as well.
- One Riot, One Ranger: Like every installment of the films, the player character is the sole resistance member capable of making a solo trip to 1984 to stop the Meta-Node.
- One-Winged Angel: When confronted eventually, the Meta-Node appears to be a weak core that can be easily sabotaged. Turns out that's not the case, as the Meta-Node assimilates the base's facilities into a heavily-armed, hovering robotic form, for a final battle.
- Outrun the Fireball: The game's ending. After defeating Meta-Node's final, gigantic form in a boss battle, you escape the collapsing Skynet building in a nearby vehicle and speeds out a tunnel as everything explodes behind you.
- Plasma Cannon: You'll need to obtain parts in the Skynet base to create a prototype weapon called the V-TEC Phased Plasma Cannon, the Meta-Node's only weakness.
- Robotic Reveal: You'll come across some of the base's personnel, still alive, but the moment you approach they draw guns and open fire. Turns out they're Skynet's "Infiltrator"-class robots, whose human disguise gets ripped to shreds revealing their mechanical insides when you shoot at them.
- Trapped in the Past: The game's one good ending have you stranded in 1984 with no way to return, but you assure yourself your mission is now completed.
- Although I cannot return to the future I once knew, I can revel in the knowledge that it will unfold as it should.
The ultimate triumph will be man's...
