Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri

aka: Free Fall
Moby ID: 516
DOS Specs
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/27 5:46 PM )

Description official descriptions

Strike Force Centauri, the premier Strike Team on Alpha Centauri, was founded to combat pirates. As Nikola ap Io, you'll be leading them into combat. But the pirates are, too, well-armed, and the Terran Hegemony may be involved. When the covert action turns overt and a full-out assault is mounted by the Hegemony upon Alpha Centauri, all that stands in the way is SFC.

Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri is a first-person sci-fi combat sim featuring realistic sci-fi weapons with true 3D terrain. You control a power-suit with arm-mounted weapons: just aim (with mouse) and shoot, while moving completely independently (using the keyboard).

You can choose from multiple types of suits (scout, regular, heavy), multiple types of weapons (everything from simple lasers to railguns to missile launchers), multiple assistance modules (from mine layer to auto-doc), and up to three squadmates that'll follow your orders. You are pitted against enemies from pirates to tanks and mechs, even psycho clones and armed drones. Missions vary from attack and recon to rescue and defend, across three different planets in a variety of weather and terrain.

Similarly to Wing Commander III, the game features full-motion video sequences.

Spellings

  • Terranova: Strike Force Centauri - Common misspelling
  • טרה נובה - Hebrew spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Videos

See any errors or missing info for this game?

You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.

Credits (DOS version)

147 People (133 developers, 14 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 84% (based on 20 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 47 ratings with 6 reviews)

Classic Sci-Fi Fun

The Good
There's so much to like about this game. The missions were great (I especially love the covert ops mission), the graphics were great, and the sound was good, too. Back in 1996, the game used QSound to do some positional sound. It was a great feeling back then to blast up some foliage and hear the sound go through you as you walked through its remains. The CG was, and still is pretty great. The intro to the game was spectacular in its day, and still fun to watch today.

The one great design decision I remember about this game was its loading screen. Rather than give a static "Loading..." message, the game displayed an outfitting message. Rather than traditional mechs, you played with "powered battle armor." When loading the next mission, it would say something like "Preparing SFC Squad for Mission." It would then list PBA loading info about each squad member. For example:

N. ap Io Cold Fusion Plant Started Warming up Weapons ... SFC PBA Ready

It would then move on to the other people in your squad. Back when I played it, this method made the loading times very transparent, even when missions took a few minutes to load (load times varied from zero to a few minutes).

The Bad
While the FMV plot development was technically well pulled off, the story was pretty bad. Think B movie sci-fi.

The Bottom Line
A well-designed romp in a creative mech-alike game.

DOS · by Adam Baratz (1431) · 2000

Out in the open air

The Good
What the team behind 'System Shock' did next, this was a late addition to the wave of 'walking around in a metal suit' games that sprang up at the time, although this time the suit is just slightly larger than you. Unjustly ignored, the game's P75-punishing graphics engine produced some fantastic visuals (the open-air vistas stretched away for miles), and there were some intriguing missions, including a couple in low-gravity environments.

The Bad
The gameplay itself was only so-so. There was only so much strategy involved in running backwards whilst firing constantly, and a couple of the missions were much too hard, in an unfair, 'X-Wing' way. The between-mission FMV sequences are just as bad as all other between-mission FMV sequences. It didn't take very long to finish, either, and you probably won't get it to run on modern machines.

The Bottom Line
An unjustly ignored Mechwarrior-esque FPS with remarkable visuals.

DOS · by Ashley Pomeroy (225) · 2000

Great action, good strategy and kickass gameplay!

The Good
This is possibly the best mech-style game ever to be released. It reaches a fine balance between action and simulation which no other game in the genre has been able to do. I personally found the Mechwarrior and Heavy Gear games to be too technical and fiddly especially without the use of a fancy joystick. This detracted from my enjoyment of those games as I was concentrating more on the controls than on the game. Terra Nova has simple controls and manages to reach a remarkable level of immersion. For instance unlike other games, your squadmates aren't just back-up cannon fodder. They often have specific abilities like demolitions or electronics that are essential for the completion of missions. Furthermore there are several levels that are designed in a way that forces you to split your squad and use special tactics. In fact, almost all the levels have various ways in which you can complete them. Go in with stealthy scout suits to evade perimeter patrols or wade in with heavy armor and guns blazing, it's up to you. They even have scout probes you can launch from your suit and manually control to survey the area (a small window shows you a probe's-eye-view). Of course these drones can be shot down if they're spotted by the enemy. New weapons and defensive measures (and smarter, tougher enemies) are introduced throughout the course of the game and this ensures the combat does not get stale. Portable laser turrets and mines means you can set up ambushes in narrow passageways. I liked the way you had final control over when to detonate charges set up by you or your squadmates and had to make sure everyone was clear before you pushed the button. Innovations like this abound throughout the game.

The environments deserve a special mention because of their vastness. Each level has a huge playing area with varied terrain such as lakes, hills, mountains, cliffs and canyons. Different planets also have different gravity levels which affect jumping and falling. Some levels even have thunderstorms or snow falling!

Radio chatter between your squadmates also enhances the atmosphere.

The game didn't sell well when it was released; most blame the high system requirements for the time (a Pentium-90 when most people had 486s). No reason to worry about those now though.

The Bad
The graphics are pixelated and grainy compared to the glorious accelerated environments of the later Mechwarrior games. In fact you can only go up to a maximum of 320x400 resolution (if I remember correctly). For the time however, the graphics were exceptional.

The music and sound are also nothing exceptional however the use of the Q-sound positional audio system greatly enhances the experience.

Yes, the acting in the cutscenes is like most other games i.e. so-so but its nowhere near as bad as the worst and the videos do flesh out the characters to some extent (almost as well as the Wing Commander games).

The Bottom Line
Buy this game if you want to see how a mech game ought to be done. I still prefer it over Mechwarrior 4 (the latest in the series) mostly because of the greatly simplified yet equally satisfying control system. Of course this is my opinion and flight simulator afficiandos probably prefer the technicality of the Mech and Gear series. I haven't had any problems running this on my PII-450 with a Creative RIVA TNT2 card. Of course it's a DOS game so it all depends on the DOS drivers for your hardware or how well your system emulates that under windows (exit or boot into DOS if you can). The gameplay is incredibly addictive and the missions are varied and interesting both in their nature and their settings. Think of it as the Tie-fighter of mechgames with wing-commander style presentation as an added bonus. The best of both worlds!

DOS · by Aamir Alavi (5) · 2001

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Trivia

Cancelled Add-on

A multiplayer add-on was planned ("Terra Nova Multi-Player Pack Coming." was written in the middle of the back of the CD booklet), although never released.

Demos

Two demos were released for Terra Nova. An early 1-mission demo with lots of missing features and a full-featured 3-mission demo later on. Interestingly enough, the 4 missions themselves do not appear in the full game and are exclusive for the demos.

Development

The development team was known as "Team Schmitty."

Ending

Upon completion of the campaign, you're shown some interesting statistics: the repair cost for your armor suit (i.e. how much damage you sustained), and the number of trees you destroyed.

Legacy

Reportedly what Looking Glass (technologies at the time) wanted to do with this game was to create an outdoors engine to complement System Shock's indoor engine and, hopefully, merge them on a third game. Was that game to be Thief: The Dark Project? Who knows...

Origin

Terra Nova apparently started out as an adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's classic sci-fi novel, Starship Troopers. However, Looking Glass were unable to get the license, so came up with their own story and intricate universe, instead. The year after Terra Nova's release, Paul Verhoeven's film version of Starship Troopers hit the cinemas.

Practical Tips

The readme file suggests (just as the bartender in the FMV does) that "mixing alcaps and water makes a great imitation martini."

Sales

Although critically acclaimed, Terra Nova was a huge commercial flop. This (together with the equally unsuccessful project of 1997, British Open Championship Golf) plunged Looking Glass in a financial crisis from which the company never recovered. Ultimately, Looking Glass had to close its doors in June 2000. (That, and Eidos was dumping $25 million into Ion Storm at the time --Ed.)

Technology

  • While the game didn't officially support VR headsets, the option was available anyway. If you had a pair of Virtual IO i-glasses!, a Forte VFX1 Headgear, or a VictorMaxx CyberMaxx, you could use it to do rudimentary head tracking.
  • It is one of the few games that supported the 320x400 alternate resolution mode. The terrain looks MUCH better in this mode.

Tom Downey

Tom Downey, the actor of Nikola ap Io, seems to stay loyal to his acting-style and had only little roles in several less know Movies like Dracula's Curse, Frankenstein Reborn and Shapeshifter but has also small appearances in That 70's Show and the computer game Code Blue.

Awards

  • Gamespot
    • One of "The top ten games you never played"


Information also contributed by Adam Baratz, Boston George, nullnullnull, Kasey Chang, Roedie, Sam Jeffreys and Zovni

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Terra Force
Released 1987 on Arcade, 2016 on PlayStation 4, 2019 on Nintendo Switch
Navy Strike
Released 1995 on DOS, 2023 on Windows, Linux
Terra Nova
Released 1987 on Commodore 16, Plus/4
Marvel Strike Force
Released 2017 on iPad, iPhone, Android
Skylanders: Swap Force - Star Strike (LightCore)
Released 2013 on Wii, Nintendo 3DS, Xbox One...
G.I. Joe: Cobra Strike
Released 1983 on Atari 2600
Strike Fleet
Released 1989 on DOS, 1991 on Amiga, Atari ST...
Super Nova
Released 1993 on SNES
Starforce Nova
Released 1987 on Commodore 64, Commodore 16, Plus/4

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 516
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

Macintosh, Linux, Windows added by Sciere.

Additional contributors: nullnullnull, Terok Nor, -Chris, Kasey Chang, Adam Baratz, cafeine, Solid Flamingo, Patrick Bregger.

Game added December 3, 1999. Last modified January 29, 2024.