Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri

The Good
Great outdoor environment, wide variety of missions, plenty of surprises (not all the missions are as straight-forward as the briefing would lead you to believe), plenty of weapons and gadgets, lots of commands for your squadmates.

The Bad
No multiplayer (time when Duke and Quake offers them), some missions ridiculously hard (the pacing isn't quite right), not enough ammo for the ammo-based weapons.

The Bottom Line
Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri is the "mech" game that manages to provide as immersive experience as the more famous mech games, like Mechwarrior 2.

The video briefings are decent and the cutscenes are quite good, as Wing Commander 3.

The textured terrain and such, with the low-res engine, is a bit weak when others are using cleaner-looking but high-res graphics. The actual enemy units are sprites. At least the explosions look rather decent (if a bit bitmap-ish). When you destroy an enemy unit the pieces litter the landscape. Few programs do that... (they tend to disappear after a while).

There are features that simply cannot be found on ANY mech game. With 3 multi-function displays, you can actually get a true-360 view of your surroundings (with the main screen as "front"). NO OTHER GAME offer you this feature. There's also use of repair modules, demolition modules, and such that much be managed by you, which adds to the strategic considerations.

The lack of multiplayer in the times of Duke and Quake, however, prevented the game from receiving the audience that it should.