
Terrawars: New York Invasion (released internationally as Terrawars: NY Invasion) is a sci-fi/action-themed First-Person Shooter developed by short-lived Philippine company Ladyluck Digital Media for PC computers, one who recycled the LithTech Jupiter software previously used in No One Lives Forever 2.
Set in a post-apocalyptic earth in the aftermath of an Alien Invasion, medical student John Armstrong was supposed to be a transfer student in New York's Manhattan University, only for his studies to be interrupted by an alien attack. John inevitably finds himself caught in the chaos of the alien-human war, so he simply blasts his way through hordes and hordes of hostile alien mooks because all Harvard alumni are secretly trained by the military to be adept in kicking ass, right?
And nope, there isn't much of a plot beyond all that.
The game received overwhelmingly negative reviews upon release - Ladyluck Digital originally intends to release a Co-Op Multiplayer follow-up, TerraWars Online, but have since shelved the idea.
This game contain examples of:
- Abandoned Warehouse: The first stage is set in a bunch of warehouses in the Manhattan docks, all of them devoid of workers and personnel in the invasion's aftermath. It's expectedly full of alien mooks.
- Air-Vent Passageway: A few stages set in interiors of offices and subways requires John to navigate around via the vents.
- Aliens Are Bastards: Why are the aliens invading earth and deploying their war machines to squash humans like bugs? Because that's what they do, obviously.
- Alien Blood: All the alien mooks bleeds a fine spray of neon green blood.
- Badass Bookworm: Because a medical student can absolutely survive the crossfire of an alien attack, knows how to operate machine-guns and rocket launchers and even take down hordes and hordes of hostile alien mooks and outlast multiple trained military personnel.
- Big Applesauce: As if the title isn't already a giveaway, but the alien invasion just had to be set in New York. Which the design team took notice to recreate, specifically by traveling to NY and taking 5,000 photos of the streets.
- Body Armor as Hit Points: Collecting vests and armor offsets damage taken by John. Until they're damaged beyond repair and needs to be discarded.
- Custom Uniform of Sexy: Taken to the extreme with Lieutenant Amanda Lopez, the sole woman in the US Army. Who, unlike the rest of the marines which are all men (which is hardly surprising, as the game was made and takes place long before the 2013 lifting of the U.S. military prohibition on women in infantry combat roles), can run around in tight jeans, flip-flops, and a skimpy midriff-exposing spaghetti strap vest while lugging around a machine-gun, despite her callsign clearly identifying her as part of the military and that she's in a hostile warzone filled with enemy combatants (the US Army allows that, right?). Her dialogue indicates she was a doctor of xenobiology at MIT who was recruited and sent to New York when the aliens attacked, suggesting she was given a direct commission/field appointment due to emergency circumstances and sent to New York in her civvies. How she managed to lose her shirt, though, is anyone's guess.
- Darkened Building Shootout: Several stages set indoors, either basements where the lights are out, warehouses whose windows are shuttered, or the New York subways, where lighting is minimal. However the alien soldiers use laser weapons whose light gives away their position, and players can tell whenever John scores a hit due to massive amounts of glowing neon blood spilled by aliens.
- Down in the Dumps: After the docks and warehouse area in the opening stage, John and his commanding Officer, Captain Morgan, finds themselves in the city dumps where they must clear out another alien platoon. There are even trenches filled with garbage John can take cover in. John returns to another landfill in a later stage halfway through.
- Excuse Plot: John is thrown right into the action as soon as the first level begins, and each and every level simply revolves around John mowing down alien mooks while moving from Point A to B.
- Featureless Protagonist: John Armstrong's face isn't shown at any point the whole game, even outside of cutscenes which isn't in first-person. He could be the soldier on the cover art above, but since he's wearing a gasmask his face is not visible either.
- Gatling Good: There are several stages, including John's introduction stage (on a helicopter's side as the gunner), where he controls mounted Gatling guns to rain bullets on hostile alien mooks.
- Giant Mook: As the stages goes on, the alien forces start sending giant alien brutes who towers over humans and can expectedly tank far more damage than the low-level regular alien soldiers. They either carry large-bore weaponry like cannons and heavy blasters, or are Close-Range Combatant-type enemies who performs a Deadly Lunge trying to slash humans to bits with oversized claws (the latter are somehow more dangerous).
- Heroic Mime: John Armstrong doesn't have any in-game dialogue, even though Amanda Lopez and the other NPC characters does.
- Hold the Line: In the Staten Island evacuation stage, where John Armstrong, Amanda Lopez, Captain Morgan and Sergeant Yeager needs to fend off incoming alien enemies while a ferry carrying civilains attempts to evacuate.Morgan: Hold them off! We can't let them get tot he ship!
- No Body Left Behind: Slain alien mooks simply disintegrates into a pile of green gunk. Which then blips out of existance, leaving behind ammo and other pickups.
- Pistol-Whipping: If John is too close to an alien enemy, they'll hold their shots and rough him up with their weapon's barrels or butts instead.
- Real-Place Background: Apparently - during making of this game, Ladyluck Digital's development team allegedly took 5,000 digital photos of downtown New York to recreate the city, building-by-building for their game. Too bad 99% of every outdoor environment looks mostly the same, so... worth the effort?
- Red Sky, Take Warning: Despite being set clearly on earth, the skies are blood-red in every outdoor area, as a sign of how much of a Crapsack World humanity is trying to survive in after a one-sided battle against the aliens.
- Sand Worm: In the quarry stage, the alien boss inexplicably turns out to be a giant worm-serpent monstrosity who attacks John and Amanda, tunneling in and out trying to chomp down John besides periodically spitting clouds of green acid as a ranged attack. After John kills the worm-thing, he finds a way into some underground tunnels.
- Sniping Mission: John can obtain a particularly powerful Sniper Rifle who can eliminate alien mooks in just one or two shots, besides being equipped with a scope capable of zooming in on targets. Particularly useful in a stage where John enters a stadium-like arena with alien soldiers on the sides - breaking cover will have aliens blasting him with laser cannons full-auto, but John can sneak from cover to cover while sniping enemies. There's another similar one in the streets where John needs to provide cover for an evacuating team of marines by sniping emerging aliens.
- The Squadette: Among the various Special Forces supporting characters John needs to rendezvous with, there's one Lieutenant Amanda Lopez, a recurring NPC that tags along helping John and her fellow comrades in kicking ass.
- Take Cover!: The environment can be used as improvised barricades in the middle of shootouts, ranging from indestructible crates to debris and shipping containers. If John is part of another unit, sometimes AI-controlled NPC squadmates can be seen crouching and standing while taking potshots. Ironically, the aliens don't do this and simply runs around blindly during shootouts before they get themselves gunned down (which beg the question; how did the aliens win again?)
- Tripod Terror: The aliens have giant mono-eyed tripods in their arsenal. Right in the opening stage, John who's a helicopter's door gunner help some marines wipe out alien mooks near the Manhattan waterfront before a tripod suddenly pops up on a warehouse's roof, wipes out all remaining ground marines via eye beam before shooting the helicopter out of the sky. John is the only survivor of the helicopter crash and continues kicking ass on foot after regaining consciousness.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: Somehow, the laser blasters and ion cannons utilized by alien mooks can't be collected. May be justified since it's alien tech humans have no knowlegdge of using and conventional human firearms are easier to use anyways.
