New York is in chaos as the news is very bad. Communication has been lost with the city and the president has ordered a call up to the National Guard to restore order and find out what is happening on the ground in America's greatest city. You are medical student John Armstrong, and as a guardsman, you must fight your way into NY and find out what has happened. As you land at the tip of Manhattan in Battery Park, you discover to your horror that the city has been taken over by invading aliens!

Terra Wars NY Invasion is a first person shooter that sets up the premise of the player being a guardsman and taking on the aliens. You will have to make your way through tunnels, shafts, subways, air ducts and many over locations on your way to the objectives, which at first is to gather intelligence and regroup the armed forces in the area. As the early objectives are met, each level will give new directions and new battles will have to be fought.

This game is sort of like Snake Pliskin (of Escape From New York fame) meets Aliens. NY is in very bad shape and it is impossible to move through the streets as they are often blocked by rubble and vehicles placed in such a way as you can't get through them. The game is set up in a somewhat linear fashion in that there really is only one way to proceed to each level, so the game is not free form at all.

When you first land all you have is your trusty pistol and knife for hand to hand fighting. As you complete levels and meet NPCs in the game, they will hand you additional weapons such as machine guns, heavy assault rifles, RPGs and even a sniper rifle. As is a standard in this type of game you must know what weapon to use in a particular area, but the game helps you by the NPCs saying what to use; this is sometimes difficult to hear so it's best to save often as you will be replaying sections several times.

The aliens themselves appear as blue soldiers with more powerful types being orange. Sometimes these aliens fire from behind fixed armored positions and are impossible to kill with direct shots. In that case, if you can work around to the flank, they are easy to kill, or if you have a RPG one shot will kill them. Unfortunately RPG ammo usually isn't available, so you will have to be more creative, such as using the sniper rifle with the scope to try and hit an exposed part of the alien.

Depending on the weapon you use a few rounds will kill most of the space scum. The pistol takes several shots while the M 4 takes nearly a clip. The sniper rifle can kill with one shot if you hit the aliens just right. Grenades are a little tricky to use and should not be thrown in close quarters, as the odds are you will blow yourself up. The knife works well if an alien gets on top of you as it quickly dispatches the vile creatures.

The powerups in this game come in several ways. Ammo and extra health are scattered around the board and sometimes killing aliens will leave you some of this as well. But much better is the vials of bio gel that dead aliens leave behind. You can collect this and use it like money to upgrade your existing weapons. In this way you can make each weapon four times as power, four times as accurate and have four times as many shots before a reload.

The game board itself starts in lower Manhattan and you must make your way north from there. At first the streets are not passable so you will have to move through the subways. But to get there you must first get through a dark car garage, a daunting task as the aliens are hard to see even though you have a flashlight. Your shot gun works quite well here and you are accompanied by an officer who provides direction and fire support.

After completing the garage you get separated and must go through the subways and sewers by yourself. These levels are not very difficult but there is some puzzle solving to be done. Trains block the tunnels so you have to find the way into the sewer to clear the area. To get out of the sewer you have to find a pipe room and make a series of timed and difficult jumps to clear the area.

Once through you find help again and end up fighting snipes firing from the NY Stock Exchange and emerging from Federal Hall. The sniper rifle will dispatch many of these and then you must race up the Exchange Place towards One Chase Plaza where you will find a nearly impossible area filled with powerful shooters firing from all sides. Take your time and pick them off with the sniper rifle, but be careful as their weapons do a lot of damage.

After that you are at 33 Liberty and you must help secure the gold from the Federal reserve located there. I worked for years in these areas in real life and know the real locations quite well, and although the game doesn't say the streets and addresses, I was able to recognize them in the game.

The graphics of this game were nice although not spectacular. The aliens and NPCs do move well and are well animated, and those aliens are quite fast sometimes. The voice acting is actually quite bad, however, which is surprising as this is usually done well in shooters. The game interface is smooth and standard FPS style so players should have no trouble with it.

Overall it's a fun little game that moves right along. The puzzles are not too hard but the jumping can be tricky at times. The aliens themselves are pretty easy to beat as long as you don't expose yourself too much. I loved the Escape From NY feel of the game, and it did have that toughness of Aliens also. A fun game.

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