I’m doing my part!
When I played Starship Troopers: Extermination last year when it launched into early access, I enjoyed what I played of the game; it just felt empty. Well with the launch of 1.0 on PC and on consoles, I can safely say that players will enjoy doing their part for Liberty. Since Starship Troopers has launched into EA the world of course has been dining on Helldivers 2. A fantastic game that wears its inspiration of the original Starship Troopers film on its sleeve. Interestingly enough, Starship Troopers: Extermination takes some things from Helldivers 2. There is an ongoing story in Starship Troopers that all players take part in by running missions on the planets below.
Unlike Helldivers though, Starship Troopers has a single player portion that has players running missions for none other than Johnny Rico from the films; who is now a colonel in the military. While these missions aren’t a long campaign, they are more than enough for players to pit there shooting skill against the arachnoids and their armies. The multiplayer though feels so much better a year later. Missions are played out with 16 players and will see teams completing missions planet sides while also trying to survive the arachnoids. The game will ramp up difficulty and spawns as player progress to ensure there is always some action, and thankfully teammates all have seemed to know what they are doing.
MSRP: $49.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $19.99
This complete game for Starship Troopers is a lot of fun to play. There is no denying that Helldivers 2 and this game both do A LOT of things very similarly. But they both do those things different enough to make each game feel unique on its own, I will say that the fact that Starship Troopers doesn’t have any other faction other than the bugs is disappointing but there is a large variety of spiders that players will be able to gleefully mow down. If you are a fan of Helldivers 2, then you should check out Starship Troopers: Extermination, the developers have polished up the issues that the game saw in EA and even added a single-player mode as well as new classes for players to choose. My thoughts on this game haven’t really changed since the early access review, I love the new additions of classes and single player components and having Johnny Rico in game is a huge win. This won’t dethrone Helldivers 2 anytime soon, but nevertheless it’s a lot of fun to play, even if it feels like ground that’s already been treaded.
Original Early Access review
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.
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 it’s 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, I’d wait for the full release which hopefully also includes consoles.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
