Come on, you apes! You wanna live forever?
When I first played Helldivers 2 back at launch in 2024, I was blown away by its gameplay of course but its propaganda about ‘Super Earth’ and trying to get citizens to back the war effort with the commercials and stuff made me think about a movie that did the same, Starship Troopers. And now Rico’s Roughnecks are back in video game form in Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War, but is it any good?
Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War takes and applies Paul Verhoeven’s satire approach to pro-war propaganda films and transfers it to video games. The opening cutscene features General Johnny Rico, played to aged perfection by Casper Van Dien in his military dress uniform thanking you for buying the Ultimate Bug War game. A game, I might add that was developed by in-universe game developer FedDev. The setup is genius and my mouth was open when I realized, I am basically playing as some kid who lives in the Trooper universe, playing this game so they can get me to go sign up and be killed by those bugs… you know ‘doing my part’.
MSRP: $24.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $19.99
The overall narrative of the game is the now unredacted missions of infantry trooper Samatha Diaz. Across eight levels players will see “the most realistic depiction of war ever made” at least that what the devs will keep telling you. Each of the levels are on the larger side of things and most feature multiple objectives for players to tackle. The majority of these are going to involve mowing down hordes of bugs, or blowing up their infrastructure. Gameplay is very much 90’s boomer shooter action, there is no ADS, no cover, just straight up bullets, bugs and explosions. Movement is fast-paced and perfect for making strafing runs around the hordes of insects. And as players progress, they will encounter bigger and bigger hordes, and will even be able to play as a bug.
The assassin bug missions I think sound cooler than they actually end up being but milage may vary. Players will replay missions from the bug perspective and it really just boils down to mindless killing Federation citizens and soldiers. The bug can transform into different forms, one allowing them to sort of fly/glide and another that allows them to bombard an area with explosives. They don’t have real missions other than tear, rip and kill and the beauty here is that even these parts are propaganda.
Graphical style is one thing I loved about Bug War, developer Aurich Digital has brought over the look from the excellent Warhammer: Bolt Gun series. Cardboard like sprites, but the enemies are all hard polygons, it’s something that just has to be played and no description alone will do it justice. Everything just has this really good retro feel, and I usually don’t like these types of things but this one just hit the right spots.
Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War is a fun game that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Despite the shorter run time, the developers managed to pack it full of explosive gameplay, a humorous satire story in the Troopers universe, and will allow players to experience things from the bug perspective. While there are some gripes like the stamina bar that limits sprinting none of these things take away from the overall fun of blasting some bugs, indeed the only thing that would be better is if this game had a multiplayer component.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
