Terminator 2: Judgment Day puts you in the role of The Terminator, the same character made famous in the movies by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Following the basic plot line of the feature film, you have been sent back in time to protect the future savior of humanity, John Connor from being assassinated by a T-1000 Terminator. During your mission you must also destroy a new form of microchip technology (based on the T-800 chip) that will eventually enable machines to take over the world, rescue John's mother Sarah from a mental institution, and ultimately kill the T-1000.

As the storyline plays out you will punch, kick, and shoot a whole lot of bad guys while looking for items, characters, and weapons. These weapons include a pistol, a machine gun, a shotgun, and a multi-barrelled mini-gun. In addition to standard action of walking, the latter part of the first level will require you to ride a motorcycle down busy streets, trying not to crash. The eight levels of action will take you, among other locations, to a shopping mall, a hospital, a ranch, and a steel mill. If your status (which acts as a health indicator and starts at 100 percent) gets down to zero, the game is over.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day is basically a side-scrolling shooter with some driving levels presented in between regular levels. Playing as Arnold, you will go through locations straight from the movie, using weapons such as pistols, shotguns, and the ever-pleasant Mini-Gun to thwart those that would do John Connor (or you) harm. All levels contain certain objectives for you to carry out. Here's an example: the first level of the game has you at the Biker Bar. Here you must find the residential adress of John Connor, which is carried out by looking him up in the phone book. All the levels also require you to find “future objects”, which are little crates containing stuff from the future.

The game's visuals are amazing, especially on the side-scrolling levels. Most of the levels that are taken from the movie have been largely expanded to extend gameplay. Arnie definitely looks like Arnie, and the T-1000 is a beautiful digital rendition of Robert Patrick. The Connors don their appropriate garb for their stints in the movie (even though I remember Sarah wearing black for the Cyberdyne sequence….), and you can immediately tell where each enemy's movie counterpart came from. Places such as the mall, the mental hospital, among others, are all huge. The graphics go for more realistic colours rather than making it bright and jippy as a general rule, all of which adds to the game.

There are a mere four different tracks in the game: the title screen, the intro sequence, the side-scrolling level music and the driving level music. At first glance this would make it seem that no effort has been gone into the music, but the in-game tunes are catchy and you enjoy them well.