I’m doing my part!!
The year was 1997 – Titanic was making history for sinking all over again, Hanson had the kids MMMBop’n and George Clooney killed the Batman with the help of Mr. Freeze. In a little film called Starship Troopers the world was introduced to Johnny Rico and Rico’s Roughnecks. In the 23rd century Earth is run by a united military organization and humanity has begun to go out into space to populate the stars. But because we as humans love to ‘leap before we look’, Rico and his compatriots ran afoul of a highly evolved race of insectoids that are dubbed Arachnids. After many ‘bug hunts’ the humans managed to push back the insects by defeating the Brain bug (this is the real plot) but they had won the battle but not the war. Which was depicted in some crappy sequels.
MSRP: $24.99
Platforms: PC
Price I’d Pay: $19.99
But we are here to talk about games, and while the sequels to the film was terrible, the latest video game release Starship Troopers: Extermination takes the premise of killing waves and waves of bugs, throws in some base building features and 16 player co-op and makes for a fantastic time. In Extermination players will be conscripted into the Earth Defense Force and will choose from 3 available classes, Assault, Support and Defense. Each class brings something different to the team and all are necessary for a successful mission. Each mission begins with the players being dropped on the planet of Valaka with the job of exploring the surface and completing various tasks. These will usually end up with the team having to collect resources and build a defensible base until they can be extracted.
Extermination is an easy to pick up game in part to its first-person shooter motif. Even having a ping system that works a lot like the one in Titanfall helps to communicate dangers and intentions to the other players on the team. Weapons run the usual gambit of suspects such as assault rifles, shotguns, snipers and pistols. Being that the game is currently in early access the developers are promising more content by way of weapons and enemy variety. Honestly the amount of variety in the various bug creatures is actually pretty good for an early access game, with 5 variations of arachnid menace I never felt like I was just seeing the same enemies over and over. Base building in the game is down with the press of a button, menus are easy to navigate and when selected a frame for the chosen building will be in place. Other teammates can come behind the person placing building parts and ‘construct’ them, this is done just by simply selecting the build tool and holding a button…it’s the future after all.
The base game mechanics in Starship Troopers: Extermination is a blast to play, and the game loop itself is satisfying. Sure, I’m a sucker for the ‘horde shooter’ type games and mashing it with one of my favorite science fiction B movies was a sure-fire way to get me hyped. But more than that, Extermination is a great game, the models for the bugs look exactly like they did back in 97. Overall, the graphics in this early access game are quite good. In fact, my biggest issue with this game is that it IS an early access game. So many video games are releasing this way and I understand the invaluable contribution to the games overall success that having real players interact with it in this early stage. But the issue is the game is not feature complete, sure its fun for now but with the promise of that complete game later, I will just wait for the 1.0 release instead of playing the EA version in the run up to it. Starship Troopers: Extermination is an enjoyable game, but unless you plan on truly playing to follow its progress, id wait for the full release which hopefully also includes consoles.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
