It may not surprise you to find out that there’s a game adaptation of recent release Terminator: Salvation.

Oh, who am I kidding? This isn’t going to surprise anyone. I find myself asking how they can possibly sleep at night after releasing this clear cash grab of a game. Because once again, we’re going to be subjected to more third person shooter…fun…in Terminator: Salvation…the game.

They actually have a name for this kind of thing—it’s called an “interquel”, and it takes place AFTER the events of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, but BEFORE the events of Terminator: Salvation the movie. You’ll be handling John Connor, who launches into a series of missions along with a group of cohorts in an attempt to take down Skynet.

It’s hard to tell how a game such as this could ever be considered fun or satisfying as you already know EXACTLY HOW IT WILL END via the application of SHEER LOGIC. There’s absolutely no way you can defeat Skynet in this game because doing so would render the events of Terminator: Salvation the movie completely worthless. The same goes for any of the characters in the Terminator: Salvation movie that also appear in the game getting killed or otherwise taken out of the fight for any significant length of time because they’ve got to be alive and kicking to be found in the movie. See? Sheer logic just spoilered the hell out of this game.

So I’ve just proven that the plot is a complete hash of stuff you already know will happen, so what’s next? Gameplay, perhaps? In terms of gameplay, this is basically yet another in a long, long series of warmed over third person shooter crap. You’ve played hundreds of games like this—I’VE played hundreds of games like this—before, so if this is the sort of thing you like, if you can’t get enough of advance / shoot / take cover / flank the enemy / shoot / repeat, then you’ll definitely want to get your hands on it.

The graphics and sound are solid enough—I’ve always wanted the Terminator series to focus more on the shattered dystopian future that is Los Angeles of 2016, and Terminator: Salvation will definitely provide shattered landscape and cityscape in superabundance, which is reason enough to be happy. And while playing this game, I was forced to wonder, you know, why can’t we do this with a mall full of zombies? I think even I’d play that game. And for those of you who say Left 4 Dead, I’m sorry, but no. I mean ACTUAL zombies, not that ridiculous post-Romero “infected” spiel. Zombies. Shambling, flesh-eating, stupid zombies. Dead Rising zombies. ROMERO zombies.

But I’m digressing like a lunatic at this point. There IS an upshot here—they really went for authenticity for the voiceacting on this one, getting Common AND Moon Bloodgood to reprise their upcoming roles (although it’s sort of a reverse reprising) in the game. Plus, they’ll get in some pretty solid names like Kelly Hu and Rose McGowan to do some voice work here too—even voice acting mainstay Fred Tatasciore is here. That’s definitely a point in this game’s favor, alongside the incredible action.

It’s just too bad there are so many points AGAINST this game. If they’d mixed things up just a bit, given us some NEW material to work with (how about a play-as-Skynet mode?), then maybe there’d be reason to talk this game up. Sadly, there’s not a whole lot of new here, so it’s just another in a long, long, LONG series of the same old thing.