Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri was my childhood. I dumped over 1000 hours into this game as a young boy, and it holds my heart - even to this day - as my favorite game of all time. Memorable characters, devestating weapons, amazing story and very cutting-edge graphics for the time are but a portion of why I love this game. The amount of lore put into the story - even if you have to look for it for a bit - puts this game on the list of many games that were far ahead of it's time.

Sadly, the choice not to incorporate Windows Support in the initial release, and make it a DOS-only game inevitably lead to Terra Nova's downfall, it has held up so beautifully over the years. Many games I played as I child, I play today and ask myself 'Why did I like this?'. This is a stigma that Terra Nova has yet to give me. Even almost twenty years later, I still play this game every year (I have perserved the disc copy and suffer through the round-a-bout installation process yearly) I go back, reinstall this absolute GEM of a game, and play it again. And each time I finish the last mission, I'm always left feeling happy. I bought this for myself, and every single person I consider a friend.

THIS is a game that MUST be played to understand. I loved System Shock and System Shock 2, but I still, to this day, herald Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri as Lookin Glass Technology's premeir child. This will be the first game my children ever play. Not Call of Duty, not Fallout 4, not League of Legends. I will sit them down and say 'Kids... this is a game from a time before publishers and developers did it for money. This game came from a time when people made games for the love of the game... not awards or money.'.

This is the single best six dollars I have ever spent on Steam. This beats out Fallout 4, Phantom Pain and all the other wonderful games I've purchased here. Steam, if I didn't before, know that now... now I officially love you.

Highly enjoyable, fast-paced combo of power armor simulation and tactical shooter.

Interface and controls might look overwhelming at first, but they are quite easy to get used to. In many ways, considering its age and amount of depth it offers, Terra Nova is a surprisingly accessible game.

While player is quite limited during the early mission, later on you'll have a choice between multiple power armors and a large array of weapons and equipment. Depending on mission, you'll either go in solo, or command varying number of squadmates. Tactical component offers sufficient amount of depth, with great array of commands that can be issued to your squadmates.

Where Terra Nova relly shines is design and variety of missions themselves. Mission objectives are extremely varied (not to mention that player will often be presented with optional secondary objectives), as are locations they're set in. You'll fight on multiple planets, in environments ranging from hills & forests, trough deserts and mountains, to barren and ominous wastelands.
Missions are all set in sprawling open areas. That, combined with solid amount of customisation, means there is a great amount of freedom and flexibility when approaching mission's objectives.
This is a Looking Glass Studios game, trough and trough.

Story is fun and pulpy, with great amound of background lore. While 'tis nowadays fashionable to mock directing and acting in FMVs from this game's era, in Terra Nova's case they are actually pretty solid and enjoyable.

This game is CRIMINALLY obscure. This was made after System Shock 1 by the same people, although the gameplay is completely different. You play as a guy in a suit of futuristic power-armor, equipped with lasers and other cool gadgets. While in the suit, you go on missions with various objectives, such as killing pirates, performing recon, search and rescue, etc. The combat is fast-paced and excellent. The graphics are rather good for the time period and are still "good enough" by my standards. In addition, the story is superb. This game contains FMV scenes which are suprisingly well acted, and there is a level of lore that very few other games can match. I spent at least an hour reading the in-game descriptions of the the planets in the Centauri system, the clans that inhabit the planets, and the current state of earth. The controls are a bit odd, but not nearly as bad as System Shock 1's controls. With all this in mind, I can wholeheartly reccomend it.

Quite a lot of soul, sweat & calibration was put into this self-published underground gem.
Some positive features to note:
-The FMV acting sequences are top-notch. The actresses are entertaining & exquisite.
-It has a great b-side soundtrack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFPHkO9H6gE
-Planetary gravity varies according to planet and affects jump jets
-Meaty range of commands for teammate AI
-A complex old-school UI which includes the ability to deploy remote-controlled drones and auto-turrets
-A random scenario builder to facilitate non-story skirmishes
-A sumptuous lore and setting that had potential for a sequel

Potential gripes
-I've seen comments complaining about the clunky controls since instead of WASD with freelook, it incorporates an old-school QWERASDFZXCV movement and look system. Contrary to naysayers, I enjoyed this control scheme immensely as it gives the feel of realism in controlling a mini-mech/powered battle armor
-The story is linear and completing optional objectives doesn't affect the final outcome. I suspect this was symptomatic of vestigial design aspirations that were cut due to development resource limitations. This trivial downside is offset by the game being short and compact.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1314818846
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1317069737

A masterpiece of videogames.
Shame people forgot about this title.
The best singleplayer fps I ever played.
The plot is stunning, the weapons, suits, and suits optionals and unique and allow you different strategies.
You can control 3 team mates giving direction on movement strategy and engagement.
10/10
Works like a charm on win 10

Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri was an immeasurably revolutionary computer game released in 1996.

Terra Nova established the outdoor first person shooter genre with extreme render distances and advanced physics modelling including gravity simulation, water reflections, player movement systems, and weather conditions. Terra Nova also pioneered and perfected squad commanding in an fps environment, with competent, realistic bots. The squad members performed the player’s exact commands, ranging from movement options, tactics, engagement techniques, and special abilities. Terra Nova even pioneered exosuit simulators, inspiring the Tribe series of fps’s. It is a very technical simulation, with the missions requiring strategic planning, in outfitting the squad with weapons, suits, pilots, and, “alternative suit functions.” Alternate Suit Functions, or A.S.F.’s, permitted an operator to perform an ability, including deploying sentry turrets, additional suit shields, demolition explosives, power plants, repair modules, cloaking, and other abilities. On most missions, the player had to rely on the bots to perform tasks for the player, either defending a structure, destroying enemy fortifications, and scouting. The player managed all of these tasks via three multi-function displays, similarly to an aerospace fighter jet. The player had access to a powerful and immersive mapping program, drones, damage outputs, and A.S.F. controls. The player also had access to jump jets. Jump jets were integral to gameplay, allowing for mountains to be scaled with ease and impossible maneuvers to be performed.

Due to Terra Nova having been released on the Microsoft Disk Operating System in 1996, months before ID Games released Quake, technical limitations exist. Terra Nova runs off of a modified version of the System Shock engine, based off of the Ultima UnderWorld engine. To accommodate the long render distances, only a limited area around the player is texture mapped. For extreme distances, voxel rendering was utilized. Because of this conglomerate of rendering techniques, the resolution is limited to 320 by 400 pixels. Based off of the System Shock engine, Terra Nova also inherits System Shock’s controls, lacking mouse look. Due to poor popularity, few mods exist for this game. Joerg Fischer, now a German neuroscientist, wrote a famous mod for Terra Nova known as Operation Stonehenge, available at Rich Nagel’s website. Upon inspecting Steam’s Terra Nova game files, it was observed that Night Dive Studios hadn’t even bothered to extract the game files from the ISO copy of the disc. If anyone intends to modify Terra Nova, the disc’s contents must be extracted. Also notable is the use of DOS4GW instead of DOS32A in the Disk Operating System Emulator, limiting the maximum performance and speed of Terra Nova.

Terra Nova was and is an extremely accurate and enjoyable exosuit simulator. The game had the reputed Seamus Blackley as the lead physics programmer, responsible for dozens of flight simulators, including Flight Unlimited, and was originally planned to be part of the Starship Troopers franchise, hence why the player and his or her squad began each mission by falling from the sky. The character models were based off of a dynamically animated skeleton with bipedal physics simulations that outclass current fps’ movement systems. Similarly to System Shock, Greg LoPiccolo composed and programmed the soundtrack to dynamically react to the player’s status. It was Paul Neurath’s dream, the director of Looking Glass, the team of programmers, artists, and designers responsible for Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Terra Nova, System Shock, Thief, and Ultima UnderWorld. Unfortunately, like their previous titles, Terra Nova received critical acclaim and no popularity. The company went bankrupt and was summarily purchased by Ion Storm. The highly experienced team proceeded to develop the highly regarded Deus Ex and System Shock 2 games. After Ion Storm’s breakup, the Looking Glass team was divided amongst many current developers, with some now returning under Paul Neurath’s new company, OtherSide Entertainment. With the rights to System Shock finally having been purchased by Night Dive Studios, work on remaking System Shock and developing System Shock 3 has finally commenced. If anyone recalls the final scene from System Shock involving TetraCorp, a new Terra Nova might be coming out within the next few years.

Citations:
A PC Gamer article on Terra Nova:
http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/terra-nova-review-pc-gamer/
An EDGE preview on Terra Nova:
http://www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/terra-nova-flight-unlimited-preview-edge/
Rich Nagel’s Terra Nova Downloads:
http://jasonwilliams400com.startlogic.com/snor/weeds/Terra_Nova/
OtherSide Entertainment:
https://www.othersideentertainment.com/

Don't forget to salt the fries!

An amazing-for-the-time squad commander Mech simulator thats fast and fun to play with a lot of depth.

It feels different to most walking robot sims in that these "Powered Battle Armor" suits are a lot more agile and fragile than a Mechwarrior Mech or a Heavy Gear Gear. Success requires good use of terrain, planning your approach, strafing and your jump jets. Background and story are interesting and there are a lot of FMV cutscenes (reminiscent of Wing Commander 3/4) although the writing and acting are pretty cheesy.

Fortunately its aged well and doesn't have issues like a lot of other DOS era games, the interface and controls are OK and there are two training missions at the start that function as a tutorial. Hard to believe this came out around the time of Doom - the rolling hills of the terrain, water reflections and other engine features are amazing for a DOS game.

Make sure you read the quick reference card PDF that is in the game directory - lots of useful controls and shortcuts in there!

Pros:
- Fun squad-based Mech game with more agility than most
- Good variety of missions, terrains and planets (varied gravity, weather etc)
- Detailed but sensible order system for your squadmates (e.g. order a cautious approach or all-out attack)
- Difficulty can be changed before the mission if you're finding missions too hard or too easy
- Random one-off scenario generator for quick action
- Optional tutorial missions to get you started
- Interesting storyline and background with lots of FMV cutscenes
- Bonus Features in the game directory includes scans of the Manual, official Strategy Guide, game art and music
- Controls are not perfect, but reasonable and easy to pick up

Cons:
- Lots of very useful controls buried in the manual (e.g. shift to bound in game which uses jump jets to boost your movement speed, tab in the base menus to see where to click, keys to crouch and look sideways) and especially 'o' to bring up the options menu which includes the difficulty settings.
- Video resolution limited to 320x400 at most (wierd as it seems to be using a modified version of the System Shock 1 engine which supported much higher resolutions)
- Might require some mucking around to configure sound when you first start, the Gravis Ultrasound emulations seems flaky

This is one of the great forgotten games of the golden DOS era. Unfortunately, it was released too late and was overshadowed by Mechwarrior 2. But while I really like Mechwarrior, I like this game even more. I finished it twice.

You command a battle suit in first person. There are different suits, selectable equipment, a squad to lead, huge maps and diverse, interesting missions.
It feels more like a simulation than your average shooter or something like Mechwarrior. You use the keyboard to walk and turn. The mouse doesn't look around with a fixed crosshair but instead is used as pointer to click on the suit controls and point your arms to shoot on the visor. There are also keyboard shortcuts for the controls. This alone makes the feeling more simulationy.
Situational weapon and equipment choice is important. Positioning and tactics win fights. The squad can be really helpful if commanded well.

The cut scenes are a little bit cheesy, but surprisingly good for the time, actors mixed with CGI. They are in fact the reason the game took so long. The story is OK, I guess. There are twists, not all surprising.
The graphics were good. The maps are large with high visibility range. Objects are identifiable. There's a HUD. At that time I was really impressed and it is at least functional today.

Looking Glass Studios also made System Shock and Thief, great games that basically founded new genres. This one probably, too, Tactical Squad Shooter. They knew, what they were doing.

At the time of writing there were only 32 English reviews and the game cost only 1,19€ on sale. Buy it. It is good. It is history.

Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri is a mech-action game by the now famous Looking Glass Studios. Much like many of their other games, this one got overlooked at release, but unlike their other non-sports or flight-sims, this one never really did seem to have garnered a huge cult following.
I went into Terra Nova with very little knowledge about the game. Before I got it on steam, I had only seen the box for this game, and never played it, or watched any videos from it. So there are no nostalgia goggles going on here.


Graphics & Sound
Terra Nova was released in 1996, and you can tell that it's an old game by just looking at it. The graphics look pixelated, the FMVs look poorly compressed and are in many cases shown in a smaller window. Many objects are also 2D sprites despite the game being a 3D game.
With that being said, the developers did a really good job working with what they had. The environments feel big, and despite how pixelated things are, it's never hard to tell what things are supposed to be. They also made good use of simple effects in order to convey different conditions, far more so than any contemporary game I can think of. While the game looks old, it does not feel old, if that makes any sense.
The sound is a bit of a mixed bag. Some of the tunes that play are good, but some clearly needed better hardware. Most weapons have convincing sound effects, and the voice clips from the different characters come through clear (even if the voice acting is not always good).
The game does some neat things to make things more believable. For an example, during a thunderstorm, there's a delay between you seeing the flash, and hearing the sound. It's a tiny detail, but it does help build immersion.


Story
In the future humanity has managed to colonize the solar system. Earth decides that it wants to rule the entire solar system, but your group don't want to be ruled by anyone. So they're allowed to leave, and colonize another system. Now earth is once again showing interest in your land, and you're forced to fight the invading earth forces.
There are hints of a really interesting universe in this game, but sadly the setting feels underdeveloped. Had they spent more time fleshing out the game world, the story & setting might actually have been something memorable. It's still better than that of most action games, in particular of the era, but there's so much room for more.
Also, there's one huge inconsistency. How large are your mech suits (or Power Battle Armour (PBA) as they're known in game). In the cutscenes they look like they're about 2-2.5m, but in game you tower over trees and when standing next to a house, they look to be at least 2 stories tall.


Gameplay
For a game released in 1996, Terra Nova feels surprisingly modern. The game uses a form of proto-WASD controls, which are easy to get used to if you've played any modern shooter. There's no mouse look, but that's in part due to you having to use your mouse to manipulate different systems in your suit, and there's at least mouse aiming.
The suits are a versatile and agile lot. There are 3 kinds of suits, light, medium and heavy, and they do what you would expect. The light suits can only have 2 weapons equipped at once (or 1 big weapon), and has far less armour, but moves faster. The medium & heavy suit can both equip 4 weapons (big weapons take 2 slots), and there are weapons that only the heavy suit can equip. The medium suit is of course faster but less well armoured. All suits are equipped with jumpjets, allowing you to fly several times your height up into the air. There are also plenty of other equipment that you get to use through the game, giving both replay value and variety between the missions.
You also have a squad of up to 3 more members that you sometimes need for different tasks, but often just acts as a bunch of extra guns that can help you out in combat. You can give orders to the squad, but most of the time they behave in a semi-intelligent way. Just don't give them powerful weapons that deal area damage, that's a surefire way of getting killed, or having them kill each other. They're also not very good at self-preservation, but for most missions, losing squad members is not a big issue, they'll be back for the next one with no harm done to them.


Final thoughts
Just how good Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri came as a bit of a surprise to me. While I knew that Looking Glass has a good track record with making games, I did not expect this one to have held up this well. The controls feel surprisingly modern and smooth, and the action is fast paced, but never mindless. There's a good amount of variety between the missions, and the fact that you can bring your own loadout for most missions also makes for some great replay value.
There are also plenty of details in here that makes the game very immersive. This game beats most modern action games in this regard, but considering it was Looking Glass who made it, that should come as no surprise, almost all of their games were great in this regard.
That's not to say that the game is perfect. Sometimes the lack of self preservation among squadmates can force you to restart missions, and the game is both short (in game time after my first playthrough said 2:41:38, but that does not count cutscenes), and relatively easy. Still, the good absolutely outweighs the bad, and the game comes highly recommended.

Recommended if you like games and enjoying life