"Funny. For someone who believes there's no such thing as fate, Connor likes to watch things happen exactly as he intended to." – Kyle Reese, Annihilation Line DLC

The idea of John Connor has always intrigued me. What would it be like, I've often wondered, to do a puzzle knowing where all the pieces go, but not having a clue what picture they will add up to? How would it feel to live as a sort of near-sighted prophet, knowing what the future holds — but only up to a point? What would that sort of upbringing do to you, as a person? Would you even remain wholly human? Or would awareness of the stakes turn you into as calculating a being as the one that you were destined to oppose?

I never answered any of those head-scratchers (because I'd see a spaceship shooting lasers and my wee brain would jump tracks), but the concepts of predestination, foreknowledge and fate have stuck with me throughout the years as ones Worthy of Indepth Contemplation... And not just me, it seems, because Teyon went and made a game about them.

Now – to be clear: I am not saying a developer made an FPS to explore deep, philosophical questions (I'm fairly sure they made Terminator: Resistance just to cash-in on a popular franchise); and a case could easily be made for the presence of those concepts being a result of strict adherence to the source material (which featured them throughout). But the fact remains that the game's campaign revolves around them and – as narratives go – does a decent job of fulfilling their potential.

In Terminator: Resistance, you play Jacob Rivers – a civilian cog trying to outlive the Skynet apocalypse. You start out scrounging in the rubble that used to be Los Angeles and, over the course of the main campaign and (paid) Annihilation Line DLC, take on increasingly more important roles for the human resistance brushing up against events and characters referenced in the original Terminator movie. The game also has a single-mission Infiltrator Mode, which lets you stomp around as the titular T-800 on the hunt for intel that will aid Arnold Schwarzenegger once he is sent back in time.

Teyon's greatest achievement with this game is its fitment into the Terminator lore. Everything – from the impressive graphics that perfectly recreate the bleak future of Reese's nightmares, music that emulates themes from the movie soundtrack, solid writing that meshes seamlessly with canon events; to the iconic assets that could have rolled straight off the movie set – is made to a consistently high standard that Does the Source Material Justice. Simply put (and I know it's a low bar to clear, but — still) this is the best Terminator game you can play.

Underneath the graphics, writing and lore, the gameplay can be best summed-up as a smaller, dumbed-down DeusEx with Fewer Things To Do (for one thing, the nuclear holocaust seems to have obliterated all ladders).

Jacob can run, jump, slide, sneak (crouch), shoot, pick locks and hack (if Frogger can be called "hacking"). There's quests, experience and levels, but the "quests" are just waypoints where Things Probably Need Shooting and all you can spend XP on are nine "skills" that increase health, give an extra row of inventory or let you craft "more advanced" items from an underwhelming list.

There is dialogue and some causality but – for the most part – Resistance is a pretty linear experience that doesn't differ drastically from one playthrough to the next. Once finished, short of nostalgia, the game offers little enough reason to boot it up again.

But although the gameplay is shallow and limited, the game's overall execution is strong enough to carry it through. If you enjoy DeusEx-like exploration and combat, Resistance is a very pretty, well-written (if short, at just 10 hours) diversion that falters slightly towards the end (where things get overly shooty and repetitive). And if you are a Terminator fan (as I very much am) this is the most immersive experience on offer since 1984.

I'm still not sure about all them hypotheticals I outlined at the beginning, but there are two things Terminator: Resistance has cleared up for me: 1) it's a solid game worthy of a playthrough and 2) John Connor may well be humanity's savior, but saviors prioritize and aren't always the best of people.

Pig Recommends:

• Fallout: New Vegas – to see what happens when the nuclear holocaust wipes out all ladders and the concept of contrast... kidding – FNV is a more RPG-inclined FPS with a grand swathe of Arizona, California and Nevada to explore; made by fondly-remembered Obsidian, the game is not without their trademark bugs, but is the best first-person Fallout around and – between the base game and its five DLCs – offers over 130 hours of shooting, snooping and skill-based chat;

• Stalker: Call of Pripyat – the third (and, to date, best) game in GSC Game World's Stalker franchise still doesn't do its origin justice, but makes for a fun, creepy FPS experience scavenging the Zone for artifacts, surviving emissions and wondering whether that shimmer you saw out of the corner of your eye was just an anomaly or a bloodsucker closing the distance;