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Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri Developer: Looking Glass Studios Publisher: Looking Glass Studios Year: 1996 Squad-based action games are the rage these days, but few are as innovative or ambitious as Looking Glass Studios' Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri was. Terra Nova was a first-person shooter with a futuristic setting, and it distinguished itself from other FPS games by providing you with several types of powered battle armor. The armor had a heads-up display that provided a moving map, target information, and all the other things we had come to expect from playing games like MechWarrior 2. The difference was that in Terra Nova you controlled a single mechanically enhanced soldier instead of a towering juggernaut capable of leveling entire cities.
The game was set up like a ground-based Wing Commander, with a mix of live action and computer-generated-image cutscenes laying out the plot between missions. This was a mistake, as the acting was universally bad and the plot was truly forgettable. Fortunately, Terra Nova's story shortcomings were more than made up for by the brilliant missions, designed so that you could successfully carry out objectives using a variety of tactics. Terra Nova had it all: squad mates who actually carried out orders and provided verbal feedback during missions; sprawling environments with rolling hills and hundreds of individual (and destructible) trees; true 3D environments that let you fly through the air using jet packs or sink waist-deep in a pond; and special effects like reflections, transparent smoke, and voice communications from squad mates, which really brought the combat to life.
Granted, older games like the underrated Magic Carpet series boasted many of these features, but Terra Nova took things several steps further. Despite the sci-fi theme, the game had an incredibly realistic feel. The physics model did an excellent job of conveying the effects of variable gravity; slopes and water affected your running speed; and the use of Q-Sound 3D audio technology showed us just how great games were going to sound in the future.
In the end, Terra Nova's complex controls and steep system requirements sealed its fate. It served only as a treat for patient gamers with deep pockets, and at the time of its release most first-person fans were busying themselves with Duke Nukem 3D and Quake. By the time the average computer owner had hardware good enough to run Terra Nova it was eclipsed by newer games. Now that Looking Glass is no more, it's unlikely this game will get the modern sequel it deserves.
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