Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri

This is one of the most innovative games of all time. The roots of games like Starsiege: Tribes, Rainbow 6, and Ghost Recon are in this futuristic tactical shooter, and details like being able to order your squad members around, a customizable inventory with things like deployable turrets that let you approach missions in whatever way you like, and the large maps are still ahead of the curve compared to lots of shooters that are released today. The campaign has great missions and hilariously bad FMV cutscenes, so it's a winner all around. The controls are somewhat clunky, but nowhere near as bad as one of Looking Glass's other classic games, System Shock. You'll get used to them sooner or later, and when you do, you'll be rewarded with one of the great tactical shooters ever made.

But not because it's bad - precisely because it's so good, so richly featured and delightful. It's the sort of game that one played at the time and thought, "Boy, this is amazing, just think what games are going to be like in a few years, when the graphics improve!" Well, the graphics improved, but the games didn't get better. In fact, games have regressed and LOST the kind of quality this game showed, they never fulfilled the potential this game gave one a glimpse of. Gameplay, squad command and squad banter, mission variety, exciting action, a convincing s-f setting, a good story - it's all here, and despite the massive improvements in graphics, nothing better than this, of this kind, has yet been made. Maybe in one area here or there (e.g. squad banter in BioWare games), but nobody's done the whole package like this.

Nostalgia being what it is, I was afraid this game wouldn't be as mind blowing to me today as it was in the 90s. But after having played through it as an adult, I can savely say that it holds up, and it's a shame that bad timing and misguided marketing decisions made this game go under. It has all the components of a true classic, all it needed was a bit more exposure. I haven't talked to anybody who knows the game and doesn't think it's good, which makes me truly believe that if more people played it, we would consider it to be a timeless classic. Just as with my first playthrough all those years ago, it took me a couple of missions to get to grips with the controls. They are not unintuitive, but almost every action can be done via the HUD or keyboard shortcuts. It took some time to find my preferred way of handling things, the best layout for the HUD (there are different screens with information that you can have either on the main display or on one of three smalles screens in your HUD). Once I decided which actions to do with the mouse and which ones via keyboard, my battlesuit became an extension of myself. The AI companions work really well, not just for a game of its time. The commands you can give to your squad are impressively varied and nuanced, and my team usually ended up doing what I expected them to do. Missions are varied and exciting, and never overstay their welcome. You'll be doing solo recon missions, ambushes, head on assaults, and even some infiltration. And the mission design plays masterfully with the uncertainty of war. One major plot line is that there's a mole in your ranks, which means some missions turn out to be based on inacurate intel, or just straight ambushes. It was exciting back then and is still exciting now to enter a mission and find the reality on the ground a bit different from the briefing. I'm running out of words, but I hope I managed to convey that this game is worth a shot, whether you've played it before or not.

This is truly a forgotten classic. Yet it had no commercial success. For a more in depth review check out my video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Acddu6tzsgc Where the game still shines even nowadays is the gameplay. Here we'll also find the cause why it never became a commercial success. Your PBA - that's how the exo armor you wear in Terra Nova is called - can be micro-controlled to death. You can rotate the torso, look up, down, left and right, strafe and use jump jets. There's a portable drone for reconaissance purpopses you can control manually or via navigation markers. The three multi function displays can be controlled seperately. For example there's a 360 degree view option for close quarter combat. Or you can stream visor cameras of your squad mates which comes in handy when they are behind a hill or structure. Combat is fast, fluid and responsive. And challenging. You need to use cover wisely and display some precise shooting otherwise you're going down quite fast. Luckily your sqadmates aren't completely useless like in many modern games where they fire indiscriminately magically hitting opponents but doing no damage to them. Here they move and shoot more or less intelligent. Position them in the right spot and they will easily bag half of the mission's kills. I loved Terra Nova and it still plays well today. If you can get over the now horribly pixelated 3D environment you'll find a jewel of a game. I still felt immersed into the world while recording the footage for this video. It's one of the best simulations of exo-armor ever done in opinion.

As the title suggests, I can assure you, all these positive reviews are not just nostalgia. I am playing this game for the first time in 2019. This game is older than I am, by a couple months. I am absolutely loving it. The FMVs are full of 90s FMV cheese that I find to be quite endearing, the news logs are actually pretty well written, and the gameplay is absolutely phenomenal. Scouting out areas with drones, EM emitters, or just zooming in and turning on the IR vision mode, giving commands to your squadmates, the fully diagetic and interactable HUD, they all combine to create an experience that remains fun, compelling, and unique to this day. My one and only complain thus far is that the movement controls have not aged well, but I was able to fix this by rebinding a few keys, which you can do by pressing ctrl+f1. I must admit, I am deeply enjoying the suit. Would thoroughly recommend this game to anyone curious about it