Terrawars: NY Invasion

The Good
You'd have to be Albert Einstein to find any redeeming qualities here. This game sucks.

The Bad
Where to start? Terrawars boasts being able to run on a wide variety of diverse PC configurations. While this is definitely true, I want to point out that this is not because the game was optimized well or anything. Really, it's because the game's graphics and production values seem like they came from the days of DOS. The graphics are easily the worst that I have ever seen in a modern computer or video game, with extremely low polygon counts, pixelicious textures, appallingly detail-challenged environments, ultra-jerky character animations, and an extremely ugly fog in outdoor levels. The audio is equally abysmal. There aren't many sound effects, and what's there is absolutely awful. The weapons sound underpowered, the grunts from aliens are extremely repetitive, environmental sounds seem randomly assigned (shooting at objects, etc.), and even mentioning the god-awful voice acting would be giving it far too much credit. Additionally, although the system requirements are listed as a Pentium III, 256 MB of RAM, and so on, I've heard reports that the game ran successfully on PCs from 10 years ago. I really wouldn't be surprised if these reports are true. In all honesty, I thought that Star Wars: Dark Forces and Duke Nukem 3D, which are games from that same time period, had vastly superior graphics and production values to this pile of crap.

Of course, I could've forgiven the awful production values if the gameplay was any fun. Unfortunately, the production values are easily the best part of Terrawars. Buckle and tighten your seatbelts, folks, 'cause this is gonna be a really bumpy ride...

Ultra-Laughable Storyline
To be honest, Terrawars has the most retarded storyline that I have ever seen. You're a medical student named John Armstrong, and medical students like you get drafted into the Army National Guard...but why? I wouldn't have cared much about the storyline if you just played as a generic Marine or cop or whatever, but this comes off as a completely embarrassing attempt to break away from the generic "tough-guy-against-aliens" storyline that got old a million games back. Want to learn how to make a decent storyline without having the main character as a Marine or cop? Go play Pariah. As for the aliens, you don't get any backstory on why they came to Earth or even where they came from, making the alien invaders completely one-dimensional.

AI? What AI?
To put it simply, there is no real AI in Terrawars. Enemies follow the exact same path every time, firing their weapons randomly. Some of the enemies just stand there and shoot without following any path...

Poorly Balanced Gameplay
...but that doesn't make the game easy. Enemies are capable of shooting through walls and cover (even though you can't), and no matter where you are or where they're actually shooting, EVERY SINGLE SHOT from their weapons ALWAYS hits you! Further adding to the already extreme frustration is the terrible hit detection. Enemies take random amounts of damage before dying: sometimes, they die with just one shot, while other times, they take a nearly infinite punishment. Weapon reloading times are also way too long as well, which can easily get you killed in the heat of battle.

Awful Shooting Mechanics
The weapons are generally unsatisfying to use, and they all do very little to distinguish themselves. For instance, the assault rifle already has pinpoint accuracy (assuming that the awful hit detection doesn't get in your way), so there's absolutely no reason to use the sniper rifle. Also, since there's no limit to how much ammo you can carry, it wasn't uncommon to be carrying up to 300 grenades and 2,000 bullets. Come on! Even if Popeye had that kind of weight on his back, it would kill him in less than a second. The "biomatter", which is supposed to upgrade the functionality of your weapons a la Pariah, also does no noticeable changes to your weapons.

Copycat Developers
The developers of this game must have been so lazy as to rip off textures and sound effects from much better games like No One Lives Forever (not too surprising, considering that Terrawars uses a dumbed-down version of the LithTech engine from that game). It's not like the Terrawars versions of such textures and sound effects are any good. Of course, they were very likely watered down so that Terrawars would "run well on diverse PC configurations".

The Bottom Line
Terrawars is easily the worst game to ever see the light of day, and I'll be absolutely shocked if an upcoming game manages to be worse than this. Terrawars is like the mother of all the awful budget titles I've played over the past 6 years. I mean, just look at this piece of crap! The game is thoroughly unplayable due to awful play-balancing and hit detection, so the gameplay gets a 0 / 10. There's no actual AI behavior, so the AI gets a 0 / 10. The graphics are even worse than Star Wars: Dark Forces circa 1995, with watered-down versions of textures ripped from No One Lives Forever, so the graphics get a 0 / 10. The sound effects are also watered-down versions of those ripped from much better games, and feel randomly assigned, so the audio gets a 0 / 10. The voice actors show absolutely no enthusiasm or effort whatsoever, so the acting gets a 0 / 10. The storyline is embarrassingly retarded, so the story gets a 0 / 10. Is it not clear up to this point? Don't play this game!