Sense before starting: My couch co-op partner in crime had played a bit of this on PC and informed me that the campaign is quite short and supposed to be fun for co-op.  I didn't really know what to expect otherwise.

Owned/Borrowed/Rented:  Rented.

Play again?  Unlikely as we finished the game in one sitting.  I don't care enough to play it again on higher difficulty settings.  This lack of desire isn't a reflection on the quality of the game, however, as I simply have too many games to finish these days!

Thoughts

     One of the things that I have generally avoided as a gamer is a game based on a movie.  In my opinion, these are often just an attempt to grab at more cash for the trademark and tend to lack in quality gameplay.  In Terminator Salvation's [TS]case, however, it was quite different.  Where I felt the movie was badly written and mostly unentertaining, I found the game to be much better.  To be fair, the game is about events leading up to the movie - regardless, I enjoyed the 4 hour storyline in the game much more.

     TS features a rather interesting cover system.  Many critics and reviewers seem to criticize games that utilize cover systems for simply being a Gears of War rehash.  Personally, I think they quite simply make sense and moving from cover to cover during a battle is the intelligent way of doing combat. 

     Similar to most games using cover, you click A to enter cover when you're up against or near an object that can be used to shield you.  You use the left stick, which is typical, to move along the cover object.  When you reach the end of the object (or press upwards when there is another cover object ahead of your character), however, an icon appears in the center of your screen.  A half-circle made up of five segments with a dot along the half-circle's radius.  White segments are possible movements for your character and the dot represents your character.  Using the left-stick, you can direct the dot to one of the white segments and click A, in which case your character will crouch-run to the new cover location.  This is extremely handy for flanking enemies and was a feature we quite liked while playing.

     Throughout the 4 hours, the team that you are travelling through areas with varies depending on what is happening in the story.  Connor is played by Player 1 while Player 2 controls Blair, the young native woman from the movie.  Connor's voice actor does an admirable job imitating Christian Bale's voice and the cutscenes are generally well-done, interesting and entertaining.  It quite honestly didn't feel like 4 hours, so the game felt a little short when we finished, but no less satisfying.

     Some of the scenarios were quite interesting and though it took a bit of strategy getting through certain battle sequences, it never got frustrating.  This could, of course, be thanks to our setting the difficulty mode to Easy ;)  I especially liked it when Connor and Blaire were on the back of a subway train with unlimited rockets to fire using RPGs.  This was fun and satisfyingly destructive.  Damn robots!

     For anyone that proudly labels themselves as an achievement whore, a mere playthrough on Easy nets you 720 gamerpoints.  Every segment of the game is 80GS.  After completing it on easy, I only had two achievements remaining: complete on Medium and complete on Hard. 

    I recommend this to people looking fora good short game.  If you enjoyed Gears of War 1 & 2, you would likely enjoy this.  If you loved the Terminator movies, you'll get nerd-happy throughout the game.