There are many FPS that can be considered retro classics on PC. And then there are some that for whatever reason just didn’t get the same amount of “gamer love” as the big names did. One such game is the classic PC title Terra Nova. Part Mech Warrior and part first person shooter, Terra Nova really set itself apart from the crowd back then. Back in those days there was good reason why most FPS were called “corridor shooters” as ,frankly ,it was easier for developers to make good looking shooters that were set inside rather than outside. Terra Nova, on the other hand, had for its time vast and nicely detailed outdoor levels which many FPS at the time could not pull off. I enjoyed the battle suits in this game  and as I previously stated it gave the players the look and feel of almost a mech game rather than a FPS. The various weapons and abilities the suits had were great and I especially liked the camera drone which would be deployed and used for recon purposes. Yet while the weapons and the abilities of the battle suits did give a feel of a game like Mech Warrior, the speed of the game was much faster and there was no doubting it was at its hart a first person shooter. Another interesting game play mechanic was the ability to command your squamates as you progressed in the missions. Players had the the ability to assign task to squamates such as defending a position, holding fire or following you to a specific location. This was for its time pretty cool as it allowed players to feel like they were actually part of the squadron. Like many PC games of this era Terra Nova was chalk full of terribly acted “Full Motion Video” cutscenes. Yet, for some reason, while they were so hilariously and poorly acted I actually enjoyed watching them between levels because of the humor. I could only imagine how great a new version of Terra Nova could be with the latest PC technology but this may never happen. At least I will always have fond memories of the original classic.

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