Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri

Communist cyborgs decided to conduct a "special military operation" to spread their foul ideology throughout the galaxy?! NOT ON MY WATCH!!!

Recommended if you like games and enjoying life

Great game, got it on sale and was great to play a good memory of mine. Was short, less than 3 hours in mission, but that is retro gaming for you. Games were better in the past, for sure

Holds up really well and is incredibly fun to play - I love the feel, the controls, the graphics, the sound, the music; it honestly blows my mind how Looking Glass Studios managed to create a new revolutionary title with every release they did in the '90s, and Terra Nova manages to still feel ambitious, innovative and exciting to this day! With every passing hour I kept finding more and more features that blew my mind through the stratosphere and I can't even begin to imagine how incredible it must have been to see and play this game back when it originally came out. From the destructible buildings, vehicles, objects and trees to the way the characters are not just simple sprites anymore but numerous little sprites working together to create more complex animations and scattered debris once a character gets destroyed, to the moving clouds and skybox with weather effects including rain, snow and thunderstorm with lightning that lights up the world for a moment every time it struck; from the real-time reflections on the surfaces of water and the way it splashes when characters move in it, to the number and variety of different maps and environments, enemy types, weapons and tactics the player can experiment with during the missions that each offer a different approach and problem... this game is a true technological achievement in so many aspects and yet remains so accessible and fun to experience to this day. My only complaint is that I just wish the missions were more thorough and longer at times, I love exploring the environments which are vast and open and I feel that they could have been utilized better and more for how much potential lies within them during each mission. Of course this can be achieved with a slower, more tactical approach, which is possible on the majority of the missions, however some of them are tied to time constraints or generally just have only a few tasks or areas worth exploring. Despite this, there are 37 missions in total and because the game lets you tackle most of them in various different ways, there is certainly replayability in Terra Nova, and besides the main campaign there is also a Random Mission Generator that lets the player set a game mode (head-on attack, finding a target or defending a target), the number and toughness of the enemies and the number of allies, on a number of different maps, which offer even more playtime and room for experiment. Overall, Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri is an amazing game which still plays great in 2024, almost three decades after its initial release.

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TLDR is at the bottom. ;) There's one of the best PC games in history hiding under these admittedly dated graphics, clunky and complex controls, and aged user interfaces. Review complete. Now I'm going to tell you how to overcome these off-putting obstacles so that you can enjoy this masterpiece with modern gameplay (or as close as we can get) and the best graphics possible. You'll need a controller for this. First, purchase Terra Nova from Steam (currently costing about the same as a gallon of gas in the US, for what it's worth). Fire it up. Go to Options and make sure the resolution is set to the larger option. 320x400, I think. First-timers really should start the training mission and play with kb/m for a minute, to feel the workload and see the default graphics. DOSBox will have things looking pretty good (mind-blowing in 1996) but we can do better. Exit the game and find the profile I've shared in Steam under Community Layouts - it's called "MMD Terra Nova Strike Force Centauri" - and apply it to your controller (mine's a PS4). Boom - you'll now be able to play the game like a modern FPS. Mostly. Hang tight, let's make it look as good as we can. Now open File Explorer, browse to the game folder, then the "dosbox_windows" folder, then "daum." Open the file called "dosbox_terranova.conf" using Notepad. There are two sections in this file to check. Make yours look like this: [sdl] fullscreen=true fulldouble=false fullresolution=desktop windowresolution=1280x960 output=direct3d autolock=true sensitivity=100 waitonerror=true priority=higher,normal mapperfile=mapper-SVN-Daum.map pixelshader=DotnBloom.D3D.fx usescancodes=false overscan=0 [render] frameskip=0 aspect=false linewise=false char9=false doublescan=false scaler=hardware5x autofit=true Save it. Double boom. These changes will put a nicer shine on things graphically. OK, run the game and choose the DAUM launch option. Holding the cross button activates left joystick mouse, but I'd read on or you'll be hella confused. Take a minute to look over the controller profile (good time to note that while the Steam overlay doesn't work with this game as shipped, it will now). It's not as complicated as it looks. The action sets are very similar, with Battle (default) being where you'll stay 90% of the time. Triangle button will change to a separate action set for flying the drone. Holding the cross button will add a layer for joystick mouse, managing comms/MFD's and the like. FPS veterans will be right at home in a jiffy. Now this game intended for you to move with the kb and aim with the mouse WITHOUT MOUSE LOOK, all the while managing your squad and doing umpteen other potential things. A three-hand situation. And in combat, this game plays fast. Totally bananas, but hey, it was 1996. With my controller profile, you begin with the cursor pinned to the middle of the viewfinder, and it won't move independently of your view or movement, same as most FPS games. You'll play this way all the time, only moving the cursor to manage the various things that need managing. Holding the cross button activates joystick mouse for the left joystick. Move the cursor to manage, say, your left MFD, return it to the viewfinder, let off the cross button, and the cursor stays put again. The game now plays pretty much like any modern FPS with mouselook. Hold the cross button to move the cursor when you need to. Put it back in the middle of the viewfinder and park it, and you're back in business. Easy-peasy. You can easily replace joystick mouse with gyro mouse in your controller config, if that's your bag. I tried it and it worked well, but I prefer joystick mouse. YMMV. Every known keyboard command is accounted for in the profile - and there are a lot - so have a good look at it. I've labeled everything but the function keys, because they serve multiple purposes. The game displays which F-button does what in context, so no sweat. The one thing I could not figure out how to do (and believe me, I tried) is to have the mouse cursor auto-center itself when letting up on the cross button. That would be clutch. If you figure out how to do it for this game specifically, please let me know. As it stands, you'll have to re-center it yourself. Not a big deal. Now enjoy the goodness. The game does a great job of walking you through the learning curve, with each mission adding a little more for you to manage (squad members, new weapons, new PBA suit options, etc.) In no time you'll have the basics down, and you'll see why I call it one of the best PC games of all time, in spite of its age and limitations. I hope my "review" encourages you to try the game - it's truly a classic that every PC gamer should play at least once. TLDR: Great game, way ahead of its time. Using a controller, it'll play like a modern FPS using the profile I made, and just a few tweaks to a config file will greatly improve the graphics. All the deets are above. Try it out.

Wow. I played this game in the 1990's and loved it. I finished it. What a masterpiece of programming achievement for the time! Squad commands. Open world. I'm glad I can revisit this today!

Maybe old, but is so much fun, and so technical for how old it is! So many controls for the suit, lasers, super jump flying type stuff, super speed, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ destruction of your enemies! And my favorite thing, one of the extremely few games I've played that give you a good hud inside a suit/helmet. I always love that ♥♥♥♥, feels so immersive.

I'd love to see Jerma play this game, very old school cool with the FMVs, story, and what I'd say has a lot of soul in its execution. If it's on sale or if you're dying to check it out, play around with dosbox settings and configuration and have a blast with this one.

RUS/ENG Взял игру, впечатлившись System Shock: Enhanced Edition. Ожидания были умеренно высокими, так как оригинальные разработчики сделали отличный систем шок + данную версию Terra Nova ре-релизнула студия Nightdive, которая и облагородила систем шок для современных систем в виде Enhanced Edition. Казалось бы, звезды сошлись. Увы, нет. Геймплей скучен и однообразен в своем ядре и сводится к использованию одного и того же оружия, часть арсенала, кажется, не работает или неэффективна (говорю в частности про дымовые гранаты). Не помогает этому и качество ремастера - без танцев с бубном не играет музыка, не включаются катсцены. О том, что я пропустил ВСЮ музыку и часть катсцен я узнал спустя 8 часов, когда эксперимента ради запустил игру на линуксе :/ Отмечу, что визуал и презентация игры мне нравятся: ранняя 3д графика, перегруженный, но иммерсивный интерфейс, «сырные» катсцены с срин скрина, собственный лор и какой-никакой сюжет - явные плюсы, на мой взгляд. Тем не менее, если вас, как и меня, привлекла ретро-графика и/или опыт System Shock:EE, порекомендовать игру я не могу. Поиграв, понял, почему она провалилась в свое время. —————————————————— I took the game, impressed by System Shock: Enhanced Edition. Expectations were moderately high, as the original developers made the excellent OG system shock + this version of Terra Nova was re-released by Nightdive, who optimised System Shock for modern systems in the form of Enhanced Edition. It would seem that this game is ought to be DA MASTERPIECE in every pose way. Alas, not really . The gameplay is boring and monotonous in its core and boils down to the use of the same weapon, part of the arsenal does not seem to work or is ineffective (I'm talking about smoke grenades in particular). The quality of the remaster is embarrassing , too - without some file machinations, no music plays, some cutscenes just don’t play. I found out that I missed ALL the music and part of the cutscenes 8 hours later, when I launched the game on Linux for the sake of experiment :/ I should note that I like the visuals of the game, as well as its presentation: early 3D graphics, overloaded yet immersive interface, "cheesy" green screen-shot cutscenes, peculiar lore - those are the game’s advantages, in my opinion. Nevertheless, if you, like myself, adore retro graphics and/or look for something like System Shock:EE experience, I can't recommend the game. I do now realize why it failed on release.