Terminator Salvation has surprisingly good art direction

And

It constantly breaks up gameplay with tiny cutscenes

It keeps your weapons!!!

this is a 360 game!!!

is this beautiful? is this the best looking game ever? nah, nothing like that, but... it's a really surprising showing for that era

more color in this one screenshot than all of gears of war 1

Bizarre thing!

Sometimes you take half a second for the gun to fire when you pull the trigger. I haven't experienced this... ever?

game throws the two most annoying enemy types in video games at you:

1) flying enemies with erratic behaviors
2) enemy that needs to be tackled from behind or with grenades

really weird thing: health isn't regenerating after a long time behind cover w/o taking damage SOMETIMES

Okay so the health system is really bad. This was a bad idea and someone at the studio leadership level should have put a stop to it

here's why it doesn't work:

1) enemy weapons cannot be avoided except through cover
2) but cover doesn't stop all damage, you will take damage while in cover
3) you do not get health back at all
4) cover doesn't facilitate movement

so get lucky or die

there's an encounter where you begin by running away from a terminator, with it shooting you the whole time, I usually get to the place where I have to wait for a man to make grenades so I can do any damage at all and I only have 50% health remaining.

btw there's no arc for grenade throwing and no reticle so there's literally no way to know where your grenades are going to go--will they hit this wall? will they go straight ahead? who knows?! its different every time!