Terra Wars: NY Invasion
All of the things that make a B movie bad, but none of the fun.
Tags: Terra Wars: NY Invasion Categories: PC Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Mike "Two Tone" McConnell on Oct 12th, 2006
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Terra Wars: NY Invasion (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
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The aliens have inexplicably invaded. It’s up to you a lowly private to stop their destructive romp through New York. This has all the makings of an Ed Wood movie, but it’s the new game Terra Wars: NY Invasion from Tri-Synergy. While the concept holds a lot of promise, there isn’t much more to be found in this game. Well, that and poor graphics, horrible voice acting, silly weapon system, and a huge headache.
I only had fun for the opening 45 seconds of this game. You begin as a door gunner for an attack helicopter. It’s rather quite fun to hose a warehouse down with a Gatling gun. After laying waste to the warehouse, your chopper is shot down by an alien robot (that looks suspiciously like it was plucked from last year’s War of The Worlds remake). From there you are on foot. The gameplay is standard FPS.
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And from there it only gets worse. There is a laundry list of things wrong with this title. Let’s start with the weaponry. The muzzle flash is entirely way too much. It flashes over the entire bottom right corner of the screen. Add in the fact it flashes with every shot, and you have the aforementioned headaches. While many FPS rely on aiming and quick reflexes, Terra Wars has a stat based system to each weapon. Even accuracy is chosen, by the amount of “Bio-Matter” you collect. I’m not sure what “Bio-Matter” is, but it doesn’t sound like it would boost weaponry. That unexplained, and probably gross pretext aside, this takes away most of the skill. While I understand that FPS is a stale formula, there are better innovations that trying to add RPG elements through the weapons. It’s just a pointless extra.
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The aliens themselves are some sort of rejected hybrid lizard/bug creature. They are ridiculously colored yellow and blue like some body builder’s pants. While they look foolish, they move like wind-up toys. There doesn’t seem to be any effort put into the enemies. While you shoot them they have a sort of evasion pattern that resembles a chicken dance. Add in this weird rolling motion that they manage to do without actually moving, and you wonder if the aliens just came to break dance. Maybe this is an alternate Earth that outlawed dancing a la Footloose. Maybe if that was the case, Terra Wars would be a little more fun. Damn you alien kids, and your dancing!
The graphics in general are pretty sub-par. While there are some nice details, others are blurs. Your bullet holes are perfect in whatever material you shoot through. However anything beyond the foreground becomes a blur except for the enemy sprites.
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Tri-Synergy touts that this game gives you allies to assist in the battle. Apparently they mean assist by using your health packs, and running around to draw fire. I hid behind them for 10 minutes, and they didn’t kill one of the aliens. Not even one. They add some story line, but the voice acting is just horrific. There aren’t many games where the dialogue is done by professionals, but they seemed to have just read the script out loud when it was finished. No emotions or inflection in any of the lines.
What adds insult to injury here is that the game is really difficult. Without warning you are swarmed by a dozen or so aliens, and dead. There’s no learning curve, and the health pickups are hidden in nests of enemies. Soon enough the headache is a migraine.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
| + Familiar game play | 1.5 |
| What Doesn't | |
| - Nearly Everything Else | |
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Generic and poorly executed, there is absolutely no reason for you to buy this. In fact if anyone ever gives this to you as a gift, they might hate you. | |
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Tags: Terra Wars: NY Invasion
Posted by Mike "Two Tone" McConnell on Oct 12th, 2006 and is filed under PC Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
