Reviewed: November 29, 2006
Reviewed by: John DeWeese
Publisher
Tri Synergy
Developer
Ladyluck Digital Media
Released: July 6, 2006
Genre: Action
Players: 1-2
ESRB: Teen
2
2
2
1
2.0
System Requirements
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
The gaming press has been talking a lot lately about how consoles have won the gaming war and the coming death of PC gaming. Normally I would dismiss such doomsday talk – but then I had the misfortune of playing TerraWars: New York Invasion.
It would be fair to describe TerraWars as a generic Half Life clone back in 1999. But in 2006 this stinker simply adds insult to injury. Over in console land, first person shooter fans get to enjoy such groundbreaking alien smackdown titles as Resistance: Fall of Man for the PS3 and Gears of War for the Xbox 360.
All TerraWars can offer by comparison is brain-dead AI, dated graphics, and frustrating gameplay. Yes I know that PC fans should count their blessings – this holiday season we still have Prey, the latest F.E.A.R. expansion, and Battlefield 2142. But sadly TerraWars doesn’t come close to satisfying that primal gaming urge to hunt acid-drooling aliens down dark corridors all by your lonesome.
You play the role of John Armstrong, a brilliant medical student drafted into the National Guard when the big bad aliens decide to lay waste to the Big Apple. TerraWars begins promisingly enough as you swoop down in a helicopter gunship, chain gun blazing away at alien scum. But then a giant alien tripod straight out of War of the Worlds shoots down your chopper, leaving you to find your way through the devastated city on foot.
As they say in the Marine Corps, welcome to the suck.
Everything TerraWars offers from this point on is the gaming equivalent of week-old reheated pizza. The game controls are generic – standard W A S D for movement, R for reloads, space bar for jumping, etc. Your character’s basic stats are health, armor, and an undefined stat that I guess must be stamina since your character slows to a crawl when it gets low.
The only novel gameplay feature is biomatter – after killing aliens you can trade in the green goo they leave behind for “cool” weapon upgrades. But if you think you’ll get to try out sniper scopes, Spec Ops assault weapons, or even alien laser guns – forgetaboutit. What I mean by “upgrades” is your M-16 rifle, 9 MM pistol, or combat shotgun suddenly becomes more accurate or can hold more rounds.
Not that you really need the extra ammo-carrying capacity since TerraWars keeps you in more ammo than the Wal-Mart gun counter. I often found myself with as many rounds for my sniper rifle as I often have for my main gun in other games.
Combat is laughably easy for most of the game. The AI is so predictable that by the fifth minute of play you can time exactly when an alien will break from cover. There was also the tendency for aliens to form little conga lines as they dodged back and forth, making it a breeze to kill two at a time with one shot. There’s really no point in crouching or taking cover – it’s just as effective to run around in circles squeezing off rounds as fast as you can.
Some aliens are protected by a front force shield, forcing you to throw a grenade at their unprotected back side to kill them. These were the only frustrating battles since grenades tended to go off whenever they hit any object instead of bouncing realistically. Most of my deaths were due to a grenade hitting the alien’s shield and blowing up in my face rather than being shot down by lasers or eaten alive.
To break up the monotony, TerraWars has you jumping around collapsed buildings and crawling through ventilation shafts in abandoned subways. The good news is it’s almost impossible to fall, even when you are jumping across scaffolding to escape a 10-story apartment building. The bad news is you can accidentally jump down into places where you can’t get out again. On more than one occasion I had to restart the game because I got stuck in the wrong corner looking for a freaking exit.
I should also mention that along the way you get to fight with allies such as Captain Morgan and the buxom Lieutenant Lopez. I always have a fun time with Captain Morgan when I’m drinking Mojitos and Cuba Libres. But the Captain Morgan in TerraWars is a real buzz killer. He’s always ordering you to cover him while he slowly walks – yes walks – into enemy fire. But don’t worry because all of your NPC allies are practically indestructible. I accidentally hit the captain with a rocket launcher and it only knocked off about 10 percent of his health.
Ok, I admit to shooting Captain Morgan in the face for calling me private one too many times.
TerraWars graphics look older than the first generation Pentium collecting dust in my closet. You’ve seen these nondescript empty warehouses and abandoned tunnels thousands of times before. The surroundings tend to be dimly lit but there isn’t much detail to look at anyway. Abandoned cars have that blocky, generic look of Grand Theft Auto 3. That’s not entirely fair to GTA – Liberty City had a lot more personality than TerraWars’ NYC. The graphics engine really shows its horse power when buildings collapse in a jumble of unsightly polygons.
Aliens come in several colors but they all look like they belong in a Scooby Doo episode from the 1970s. It’s not an alien invasion – it’s just old man Witherspoon in a rubber suit! I did get a good chuckle at the mutated banana lasers they carry, but there’s nothing remotely frightening about the opposition.
Your human allies aren’t particularly lifelike either. Everyone has that slightly deformed look that you might remember from the days before Far Cry. I was hoping that the designers would at least find inspiration from the early Tomb Raider series when drawing the scantily clad Lt. Lopez. Nope, she may run around in a halter-top and hip-huggers but she’s as much of an eyesore as the rest of the team. Only faces have real definition, giving NPCs a mannequin feel.
On second thought, I may have shot Captain Morgan with the rocket launcher because he kept giving me that creepy smirk.
This score should really be a 1 since the sound effects are stock and there is NO music. But I decided to go with a 2 because the voice acting is so darn entertaining. I now know how North Korea got the money for a nuclear weapon – Kim Jong Il does voiceovers! Granted, the Dear Leader’s New Yorker accent is a little off and he makes Sgt Yeager (who I think is supposed to sound something like Samuel L. Jackson) sound like an angry Yakuza. But all in all, the voice acting is classic.
This is the first title I’ve ever reviewed that I can honestly say has zero replay value. I don’t think even the most masochistic FPS diehard can make it through the campaign the first time around. There is a multiplayer function, but the servers seem as empty as the Michael Richards fan forum.
At $19.99, TerraWars is a way overpriced game. I might recommend it to those gamers who find horrible games a guilty pleasure – provided the price drops to $5. Better yet, pick TerraWars up as part of a “buy 1 get 5 bargain bin games free” deal, provided it’s the fifth free game.
TerraWars is the worst game I’ve played in several years. I’m still holding out hope for a resurgence of PC shooter when Crysis and other cutting edge titles come out in early 2007. But a real turkey like TerraWars makes me want to take out a second mortgage and go buy a PS3 on eBay.