Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri

super cool retro power armor simulator. the controls are wonky but work pretty well once you get used to them, the cursor click HUD interface is fun imo, and the amount of control you have is pretty cool. there are sub-displays that can show comms, a map, and weapon systems, or can be switched to show 3 camera views, both sides and rear, in addition to the larger main view which faces forward (and can be rotated right and left with Q and E keys). in terms of gameplay, its kind of like a ghost recon style game, you drop in an open map with a squad of NPCs and some objectives to accomplish. the campaign has fun FMV cutscenes between missions, and theres a random mission editor mode also for infinite power armor combat. there are only a handful of complaints on my end. one, no subtitles whatsoever. thankfully mission briefings offer a text briefing after the video, but mid-mission updates can be difficult to notice in the heat of combat. plus, since the soundtrack is retro MIDI style music, turning the volume up high enough to hear the dialogue WILL annoy everyone you live with. two, i don't vibe with the weapon designs on the power armors in this game. the armor itself is cool, i like the classic curves in the armor, very star wars or world war 2 vibes, but the way the weapons are all mounted onto the wrists of the suits arms almost like a wristwatch is not very cool in my opinion. I would personally have designed a suit with interchangeable handheld weapons that can be quickly swapped, or otherwise i would have incorporated larger weapons into arm or chassis mounts, either replacing one of the robotic hands of the suit (keeping one of misc. battlefield tasks) with a larger weapons unit, or building weapons into shoulder or back mounts on the torso somehow. as it is currently, the weapons seem a bit too small relative to the size of the armor. None of this comes up much in gameplay, as you don't have first person hands, its just a personal disagreement with a small aspect the visual design. other than those small gripes, this is one of my favorite retro mech-adjacent games. you so rarely get games that are specifically about using this kind of bulky, fully enclosed power armor, with a kind of a vehicle sim feel to the gameplay. This game is up there with Kileak and Space Griffon VF-9 and Amored Core as one of the retro games that has inspired my personal taste in sci fi gaming the most. Someday i hope to make a mech game of my own with controls along the lines of this game.

I ended up really surprised by how well this game still played. The controls definitely are still weird compared to most control schemes, but it's surprisingly ok to get used to. The mission and environment variety were decent. They gave a variety of weapons, but I only really found half of them to be useful, same with the ASFs (Like a special ability). The screen is pretty cramp between your visor and your displays, but I found that it actually ended up working pretty well. I think this game could do with a remake of some sort. Not changing much about the game, but potentially just further exploring the base mechanics with the access to much better hardware. Pretty fun overall. About the best experience I've had that really gives power armor the gravitas that it typically holds in sci-fi stories.