For the game of a film ostensibly concerned with making the difference between humans and machines count, it's ironic that your NPC allies are noticeably artificial and robotic in their movements, while environments - though detailed - are scabby on account of the scarcity of proper lighting, not to mention book-ended by load screens that sometimes feel as though they last longer than the battles in-between. Unfortunately Salvation is horribly shoddy from the very beginning. You clip yourself to cover, go into iron sights with the left trigger and let rip with the right, occasionally tossing the odd grenade or pipe-bomb at spider bots, flying aerostats 'wasps' and more elaborate Terminators with miniguns and worse.

Thrown into the raggedy boots of John Connor (but not Christian Bale), you're tasked with leading a group of resistance fighters across post-nuclear Los Angeles two years before the events of the film, and for the most part it's a cover-and-flank third-person shooter with its probing red eyes fixed on Gears of War's coat-tails. Sadly the same cannot be said for GRIN with the videogame adaptation. I quite like it! John Connor listening to his mum's tapes is a bit Norman Bates, and the only quotable dialogue is the dialogue quoted from Terminators 1 and 2, but director McG appears to have mastered glossy, FX-heavy set-pieces, if not deed polls. I was in Canada last week, so unlike a lot of people in Europe faced with the possibility of buying the multi-format Terminator Salvation game this weekend, I've had the opportunity to see the film it's based on.

Terminator salvation video game