Posted on: June 22, 2021

LATESTACORONATA

Games: 741 Reviews: 230

Have you ever have difficulty judging...

Whether a game is just good or.. a masterpiece? 'Cuz this one really hit that checkbox, but let's analyze it : 1. Does have a nice gameplay or mechanics? YES, it does. This is one of those game right out development hell that have managed to create a stellar action gameplay while having a more ''strategic '' approach to the missions( Gonna level with you, it reminded me a LOT of wing commander, only, you know, mech instead of space ships). 2. Speaking of Wing commander, does it have action- live cutscene? YES ( although, I must admit, there are a little fetish of mine, especially when there are bad acting in it... not that in this game are, only a few ones, while the rest actually are pretty immersive). 3. Does the game have a nice story? Mmmmm YES, I mean it's not super complicated, but it does have some nice twist to it, actually way more than I expected, only predictable part was the ending (which was still good). 4. What about graphics and soundtrack? the immersion factor? Mmmmm another difficult one. So, immersion : YES / Graphics and sundtrack : YES.. but it's really subjective ( which are all opinion, I suppose). Remember the Development hell? I made a little research of my own ( I was curious since I never head about to this game until 2021) and discovered that gameplay was heavily modified before shipment, and came out outdated both in sound and graphics.. but since now It'll be mostly played only by retrò gamers and nostalgia fans, it's ironically not that much of a deal. 5. Final point. all in all, Is it fun to play now? Well, if you didn't catch that from this entire review, the answer is.. YES! it got a ton of missions, companions, weapons, enemies but it doesn't overstay its welcome. And, to top it all off, it's still fresh and enjoyable, more so now more than ever.

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Posted on: December 10, 2018

wilkan

Verified owner

Games: 509 Reviews: 157

Good world-building, clunky gameplay

Pros: good text lore, some of the gameplay and the FMV sequences. Cons: most of gameplay, broken sound & video playback and old school sadistic mission design. This is one of those old games where you are punished by not doing every single second exactly as the developers planned, against much superior enemy numbers and controls that need to be experienced to understand how much they handicap the player. For example, touching a bush will BUMP YOU BACKWARDS and you need to have WALKING MOMENTUM for the jetpack to take you anywhere besides directly up. Together the controls crippling you and the difficulty ramping up steeply already at Mission 3, the game lacks modern polish of any kind. Even the DosBox is choking with the game, turning sounds into screechy noise while it loads, no matter how many or how little cycles give it. The graphics fidelity also becomes a problem as you enemies are tiny blocks of random pixels at max range, though if you come closer, they will ravage you in few seconds. You have to endure bad controls, choking DosBox and pointlessly difficult missions. Oh yeah, this game has escort missions. With time limits. Against tons of mechs that outgun you with ease. I just described Mission 4. You need to decide if you really want to painstakingly trial-and-error through 30+ missions. You have been warned.

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Posted on: December 20, 2021

Pocluz02

Verified owner

Games: 390 Reviews: 1

To short for it's own good

Just finished the game and it was great, the graphics are to be expected, like shit from a game from 1996 , the most of cutscenes are akward if not down right bad and the world building it hidden in mountaints of text, but the gameplay and the mechanics make it so fun and never gets dull, i never had a moment where i got bored while playing it, my only problem it's that i want more from it but the game itself it just 37 levels that you can beat in 5 minutes per level and the arena that is great but is also short, but after that there is nothing more, loved the game but it just to short, also the soundtrack it the best one i ever heard

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Posted on: June 24, 2018

Rivets

Verified owner

Games: 314 Reviews: 1

Terra Nova: The game that time forgot!

The Good: Terra Nova is a FPS/Jetpack and squad command game. You select the load outs of weapons and squad members including the battle suit types etc, you can pick and instruct your squad mates to perform mission objectives and know they will get on with it, so you can concentrate on your own objectives. You should always use drones to highlight enemies a head of time and use various tactics, in fact nothing has before or since come close to the seemingly effortless mix of complex options and instructions, yet presented in a simple manner. The Bad: User interface is somewhat dated and can feel clunky at first also it has some really "Cheesy" FMV. If your in doubt about this game watch or read one of the many reviews that are still made about this game now, it was ground breaking in 96 and even now one of the best games I have ever played!

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Posted on: May 11, 2023

erikcleric

Verified owner

Games: 298 Reviews: 14

Looking Glass tried new grounds.

I haven't played any Mech game whatsoever but i am big fan of Looking Glass Studios. Terra Nova to me felt like a mix of Delta Force (with its outdoors) and Battlezone 1-2 in terms of its shooting mechanics. I got into it pretty fast. To get a comfortable experience i used GlovePIE and found a script to map the turn keys and look up/down to the mouse. Once done it played pretty damn well. Easy as pie to set up. I rebound S as W (forward key) ingame with Dosbox's remapper so i could use SZXC instead of WASD because A-D were mapped to the mouse. Z, C are strafe keys and X is move back hence SZXC was a viable option. The game's FMV's took alot of the games budget as i read so i played it well aware that it might have it's shortcomings. Pros: Impressively large outdoor environments. Decent story, acting. Gameplay is basic but fun. Sound effects & music are decent. High quality cutscenes for its time. Cons: Clunky controls. I wish it had proper mouselook instead of "mouselook on-screen" hence i used Glovepie. Escort missions can be really hard until you learn more game mechanics. Max res of 320x400 is poor for being 1996 (Alot of games by 1996 had atleast 640x480 res) But there are budget reasons for that. All in all, a solid game, not perfect but certainly not terrible.

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