A proper Starship Troopers game that captures the chaotic energy of the original film is something I’ve been waiting for, for a while now and Starship Troopers: Extermination seems to be the exact thing fans of the film series have been eagerly hungering for.
Taking place on the mining planet of Valaka, Starship Troopers: Extermination has you playing as a soldier part of the Deep Space Vanguard, tasked with totally eradicating any and all bugs. The game is part shooter, part tower defense game as your team of sixteen players tries to hold off hordes of bugs as long as possible before extracting.
You’ll join one of four squads and select between one of the three soldier classes available: assault, heavy, and support. Each one specializes in a different trait such as the assault trooper who gets a jetpack to nimbly move across the battlefield, or the support who, besides being a medic, can carry multiple resource containers as opposed to the one the other two classes carry. Each class can be leveled individually and unlock new pieces of gear such as weapons or perks. In the game’s current state, the classes share the same gear for the most part, just unlocking them in a different order which was a bit of an annoyance as it reminded me of my Call of Duty days of only being able to use a scope on the gun you unlocked it for, but having to unlock it again for every other gun it’s on.
Currently, the game has two modes: AAS and ARC. The first mode, AAS, has you going from spot to spot on the map completing objectives that vary between holding a territory, killing bugs, or collecting some resources. Eventually, it all culminates in a final objective where you have to protect an arc machine from a massive incoming wave of bugs which is where the tower defense aspect of the game comes into play. You and your team of grunts get two minutes to build defenses around the arc before the waves of bugs start coming; you’ll be able to build a variety of things from bunkers, different wall types, sentry guns, electric fences, and more.
Coordination is key as your team of sixteen players are limited in the amount of each building type you can build, so you can’t just mass spam sentry turrets for example. Choosing where to build walls, and create proper chokepoints for the bugs is key so you’re not immediately overwhelmed. Good building practices thankfully become common sense after a few games, but you’ll still run into issues of teammates arguing over how to best secure the objective.
There’s a genuine thrill as the timer ends and seeing these massive waves of bugs slam themselves against the walls you built, as you and your team try to coordinate and mow them all down. More so when it’s time to extract from the mission as you all scramble to the shuttle as hordes of bugs give chase. The only thing I wish this game would add was a bit better immersion as the soldiers are oddly silent in a game from a franchise known for its overly boisterous troopers. The music as well can be a bit lowkey at times, not really matching the hectic action happening on-screen. Deep Rock Galactic is a similar playing game that really manages to immerse you in the action with the music and characters, and it’d be great to see Starship Troopers: Extermination accomplish the same.
The second mode, ARC, has you collecting resources and building a base in advance of a massive wave of bugs who are coming to destroy your arc. Side objectives will pepper the map from time to time, and offer benefits like an easier final wave or powerful weapons like rocket launchers that can come in clutch during a particularly nasty wave. The only issue with this mode is that the buildup to the final confrontation can feel a bit repetitive as you’re going back and forth collecting resources; the side objectives are welcomed distractions, but they don’t distract enough from the slog to the actual fun part of the mode.
Being in early access, you can of course expect some quirks like the bugs occasionally freezing in place or some incredibly wonky movement animations whenever you try to climb ladders or mantle over an object. The latter which I genuinely hope they fix because it can be incredibly frustrating to try to mantle over a climbable object during a hectic wave but your character just won’t register it’s a climbable surface. I also wish the game’s tutorial was a bit better at introducing you to the flow of the game, as it only shows you how the tower defense mechanics work. The game’s core loop is pretty easy to pick up on the fly, but being yelled at by other players as you stand around trying to figure things out doesn’t allow the game to give the greatest of first impressions.
Despite being a bit bare, if Starship Troopers: Extermination can iron out some of its quirks and flesh out its features by release I could easily see this being a regular on my co-op game rotation.
