Terminal Velocity: Boosted Edition Review: Barn Storming in the 28th Century

Terminal Velocity: Boosted Edition takes us on a full-throttle, nose-down dive back into the past. Originally released way back in 1995, it is a hybrid of flight sim and space shooter I fondly remember from my childhood. I was surprised but rather delighted to see it being remastered for current gen PCs after so long. But how well does this Boosted Edition hold up?

Terminal Velocity is set in 2704 where humanity lives in peace and prosperity with an intergalactic federation of fellow intelligent species. Of course, good things can never last, and the aliens betray humanity, attacking Earth and killing millions of people. Though the initial onslaught is repelled at a great cost, there is now a never-ending onslaught of traitorous extraterrestrials intent on destroying humanity. It’s up to a plucky pilot and their state-of-the-art stellar fighter craft to save Earth. No pressure then!

For a 27-year-old shooter game, the narrative isn’t too bad. When moving on to a new planet, a briefing screen will give you a run-down of what the situation is, and a tactical briefing will give a preview of your blobby, low-textured foes – generally a mix of enemy fighters, ground vehicles that shoot at you from below and targets you’ll need to take out before progressing like radar installations and shield generators. You’ll also get a nice little synopsis of the evolving story.

There are also some nice rendered cutscenes between levels to set the scene. I particularly enjoyed the mission set on a giant spacebourne missile headed for Earth. When the mission briefing described its possible effects to our home planet as having the same effect as “a sawn-off shotgun has on a human body”, it did a great job at raising the stakes. 

The first thing that struck me when hopping into the pilot’s seat was just how much sharper the game now looks. The developers have done an excellent job of upscaling the world to a higher resolution. The increased draw distance also lets you see foes from way off. Having said that, a lot of the enemy tanks and fighters are still so chunky and abstract looking it’s often difficult to tell what they are without the mission briefing, but that’s par for the course in a 3D shooter from 1995 – I am not expecting miracles. Unlike many retro titles I’ve tried on GOG and Steam, I never suffered a single bug or crash playing. This “Boosted” edition gets the job done as a remaster.

The music is just as joyous as I remember it being. The high-octane techno really fits the bill and transports me straight back to the nineties. The explosions and carnage are satisfyingly loud and visceral. I still remember gritting my teeth at the sound of metal-on-metal when colliding with another ship or the side of a tunnel, and that’s still the case today. The sound design definitely immerses you in this thrill ride.

When first getting back to grips with flying my marvelously polygonal ship, I remembered just how unusual handling my ship felt.

The player’s ship seems to exist outside of the normal rules of physics. Whether pitched directly up or down, the ship will move only as fast as the throttle with acceleration practically instantaneous, completely ignoring gravity. This makes navigating around the levels much easier than in most flight sims. Ironically, given the game’s title, blowing yourself up by crashing into the scenery is fairly easy to avoid.

You can only shoot directly in front of you. No bombs or homing missiles here! There are different weapons on offer you can collect from depots scattered around the scenery, but they’re all variations on the theme of killing the thing that’s in front of you. There’s definitely a visceral enjoyment in controlling such a gravity-defying vessel capable of blowing up anything before it with quad laser blasters, creating wicked pixelated explosions. Likewise, the afterburner power-up adds to the feeling of raw power you have, allowing incredible boosts of speed to dodge enemy fire or power through to the next checkpoint.

This lack of gravity also makes it much easier to navigate in tunnels where it’s often difficult to tell up from down. The most exciting parts of Terminal Velocity definitely occur underground when you’re speeding through these narrow passages, trying to time your acceleration to move through closing vents, sparks of electricity or turning gears. I remember as a kid back in the mid-nineties, my heart caught in my throat when barnstorming through the tunnels because it was such an intense challenge for my budding skills, and there were definitely still flickers of those feelings venturing into them again.

However, it’s the unconventional hovership physics that removes a lot of the balance from dogfighting in the open air since there’s no real struggle to shake baddies off your tail and get on their six. You can simply pause in mid-air and spin around to face your adversary and gun them down, which isn’t tricky since the enemy AI is far from stellar. They just kind of jiggle around a bit and periodically shoot at you. It made me laugh a few times when ships awkwardly bounced off the terrain while trying to fly around.

I noticed how I could very easily zip through vast sections of each level by simply hitting the afterburner, with no obstacles to stop me provided I stayed in a straight line. The dim-witted alien fighters won’t follow you after a certain distance so it’s effectively a boost-out-jail-free card.

I can’t help but feel Terminal Velocity would have worked a lot better if it was entirely set in the underground, much like its contemporary Descent was, because these parts are the most exciting, and there would be a lot less scope for exploiting the afterburner mechanics to make things overly easy. Of course, that’s a couple odd decades of hindsight talking!

At the end of each world, you’ll usually face down against a boss. Generally they fall into two categories. There’s a large, totemic thingy that you’ll find in a large chamber after navigating through an underground tunnel. Since you can only shoot directly in front, the only way to beat them is to circle around at a decent enough speed to avoid their shots, turning inwards for a second to fire, then circling again.

The other bossy variety is the megaships – which are essentially just bigger, more hit-spongey versions of the regular alien fighter craft. They joop and jive around, sometimes turn to fire at you, until you wear them down and blow them up. There’s no real patterns to learn or unique challenges to be had fighting them. These boss battles were fun at first, but they became repetitive.

Terminal Velocity’s gameplay is a little dated after two and a half decades in the hangar, even with a fresh coat of paint, and isn’t going to win in a dogfight with today’s premier flight sims or space shooters. Nonetheless, the developers have done a great job of polishing it up and making it work perfectly on modern systems. I enjoyed playing it again for its high-octane tunnel-traversing, radical soundtrack and bombastic alien blasting, and I think others could too provided they’re primed for a nostalgic blast from the past.

Final Verdict: 3.5/5

Available on: PC (reviewed); Publisher: Ziggurat; Developer: Terminal Reality; Players: 1; Released:  14th March 2023, 

Full disclosure: This review is based on a review copy of Terminal Velocity: Boosted Edition provided by the publisher.