Classic Game Club #30 - Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri

Games
1

Hello my friends, and welcome to my Classic Game Club entry for season 2! This time, I’m choosing a game from my second favorite game genre ever, mecha games. It’s fitting then, that my choice is my second favorite game within the genre (because my first, Heavy Gear 2, isn’t available digitally anywhere). I welcome you, my friends, to the glory that is Looking Glass’ masterpiece, Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri.

First off, the game is available on GOG and Steam, and according to GOG, runs on Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 10, Mac OS X and Linux. So unlike my last choice, this one should one on a wide range of machines. ;)

If you’re unaware, Terra Nova takes place in a far future where a faction of humanity has colonized Alpha Centauri to separate themselves from the evil totalitarian Hegemony back on Earth. Unfortunately, the Hegemony isn’t too keen on this, and comes in guns blazing to take the system. Playing as newly minted Powered Battle Armor (PBA) pilot, Nikola ap Io, you and your squadmates have to help prevent the system from falling into both chaos and the Hegemony’s hands.

The game involves a linear campaign with missions that can consist of you alone, or squadmates, and you usually have full control over your squadmates via a variety of tactical tools. Your PBA can not only be outfitted with a variety of weapons, but also tools like recon drones or deployable turrets. Some missions will involve simple recon without being detected to all out assaults, and there are nearly 40 missions in the main campaign. Besides this, there’s also a random scenario generator as well.

Now, this game came out in 1996, right on the cusp of 3D acceleration, and it is neither accelerated nor high-res (it ran in two resolutions, 320x200, and a “higher-res” 320x400). The controls are also VERY mid-90s in their weirdness, looking back on them, and sadly can’t be changed. Thankfully the game includes training missions, so it shouldn’t take you too long to get the hang of things. You can use both mouse and keyboard to control your PBA and make tactical decisions. Your multifunction displays are clickable, and you can give orders to squadmates by clicking areas on the map, for example.

This is an EXCEPTIONAL squad-based mecha game, really one of the best of its type. The missions are fun and varied, the amount of control you have over your PBA is really exceptional.

If you’ve never played this before, be prepared for wonky controls, crude (yet detailed and lovely) graphics and…let’s just say not the best full motion video cutscenes and briefings. If you can get past these things, you’ll find truly one of the most unique mecha combat games around. Even RPS loves it. ;) I encourage you to try this game not only to witness a slice of gaming history in the part of one of Looking Glass Studios most forgotten games, but also because it’s just a god damned fine game.

Enjoy! :)

3

It is, and you do. ;)

So I just went through the two training missions and the first mission. Thank goodness DOSBox has native screen capture functionality (CTRL-F5)! ;) After watching the intro and such, I find myself ready for the first mission.

This first mission involves moving around until you feel comfy with the controls (which are WASD but also QEZXC):

And shooting a couple of boxes! DIE BOXES DIE!

The second training mission involved learning how to use the map, drone usage:

Combat with a bunch of turrets that will fire back and hurt you, and learning how to use the deployable autoturret:

Once that was done, it was onto our first mission, a solo affair taking down a small pirate outpost with only a few guards:

As I approached the base, I saw a couple of pirates on the periphery. Once I got close enough, I went in, lasers blazing:

Unfortunately, I forgot how to…ahem…look down. so I was unable to accurately shoot at them until they tore me up pretty good. Thankfully they weren’t that tough, and after taking out three (THREE? The briefing said TWO dammit!), I laid waste to the small outpost as well, leaving only rubble in my wake.

I also got Nikolai hurt, and I forget how that effects gameplay at all, but it might, so we’ll see on the next mission.

The controls are indeed a bit weird, as several times I tried to use S to reverse, only to find that be the “walk” rather than “run” key. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it, which is good because I believe the next mission involves controlling another squadmate. Whee!

4

Excellent, excellent pick. I loved this game back when it was released - so much, in fact, that I’m actually a bit afraid of playing it again and not finding it as brilliant as I remember it being. But maybe I’ll play - I’m just glad that people can experience it for the first time now, and I hope it is still as good as I remember it.

5

If it helps, I hadn’t played it for well over a decade when it arrived on GOG, and yet I feel right back in love with it immediately.

6

Nice counterpoint to System Shock 2! One of the Looking Glass titles that didn’t spawn a sequel. I never played it, but was always curious about it, so here we go!

7

Hah, didn’t even think of the relation to SS2. Awesome.

8

This one has been on my short list of possible picks this season. I never played it when it came out, but every one who has seems to love it. Or remembers loving it. I’m already stuck on a mission, the convoy ambush one. I think I might be terrible at aiming. My squadmate suggests using the rain to our advantage, is there anyway to really do that?

9

Fuck, I think so, limits visibility. Smoke grenades are also helpful.

10

Brian, what resolution are you running at? Those screenshots look much, much clearer than I remember from back in the day. Even the screenshots on GOG don’t look that clear. All I remember is that while I loved the game, it was the most pixelated game I owned at the time. So difficult to make anything out. Are you using any visual enhancements? Or is it just the condensed screenies that make it just appear clearer than it is?

11

I was just running it in 320x400, which you set in the option menu (ctrl-o I think). No enhancements or anything.

12

Possibly I was running it at 320 x 200 then. Or my memory made it seem worse than it really was. It actually looks pretty good in your shots.

13

It’s a BIT more stretched on my monitor since it’s full screen and such, but it’s still very readable and usable. I hope to get some more in tonight.

14

Made it past the mission I was a little stuck on, and learned three important lessons. Lesson one was that the laser has terrible, terrible range. Lesson two was that sidestepping to dodge works amazingly well. Lesson three was that locking on to enemies significantly improves the auto aiming.

There is some way to configure DosBox to maintain aspect ratio. I had to find it for Tie Fighter because the stretchy cockpits were driving me crazy.

15

Yaaaayyyy!

16

Count me in! I think I actually played this, because at the time I was really into LGS. Being a huge fan of SS1 (I bought a 4 thousand dollar laptop, to play it on the road at 1 FPS), I’m pretty sure at some point I tried this. Given that I’m old, and don’t remember much, it won’t matter, as it will be a brand new game either way lol.

Nostalgia train is leaving the station.

17

Does this have mouse look? I wasn’t able to get into the first System Shock until the Enhanced Edition came along with mouse look so I’m hoping TN has it.

18

It does NOT.

19

It really does not. It uses R and V to tilt your view, and F to recenter. It doesn’t come up too often, though.

I poked around it the dosbox config and found the setting to keep the aspect ratio. It makes the view feel bigger, even though it’s smaller. Probably because that long slit view makes me feel like I’m driving a tank.

20

Nice! I’ve sadly not had as much time to play this – or anything really – this week as I’d like, hopefully I can fix that this weekend!

21

I’ve been steadily gnawing away at this for the last week or so. Most of the missions are straightforward run and gun but they’re starting to require splitting the squad up to cover multiple objectives. I had one this morning where I had to send the whole squad off one way to protect [REDACTED] while I charged off another to [REDACTED]. I won my solo fight and gained new appreciation for the amount of work they’ve put in to the suit damage model. My sensors were on the fritz and wouldn’t do the IFF thing at all, so I could see contacts but not what team they were on. I couldn’t lock on to targets, or even get a handy HUD thing up to ID things I saw. The main screen was amusingly glitchy too. Clearly a lot of work had been done on all this, for effects I’ve seen for maybe one minute out of probably 5 or 6 hours of playtime, at least. I should have taken some screenshots.