Starship Troopers: Extermination

Review

Starship Troopers: Extermination is a PvE first-person shooter based on the homonymous 1997 movie that allows you to play co-op with up to 16 players and kill swarms of bugs on a desert planet. Right now the game is in Early Access, so more content will be added down the road, but the core gameplay is already there and it works perfectly. Two modes are currently available: Assault & Secure (AAS), in which players must capture the territory checkpoint after checkpoint until they can build their base, and ARC Slam, which require players to build a base, collect resources, fuel the scanner and defend it. Each mode will see you fighting for survival, building a defensive base and reaching the extraction point to successfully complete the mission. There is also a third mode, Horde, that is listed as coming soon and hopefully more modes will become available on release. 

The game includes three difficulties: Recruit, which is best suited for FPS rookies who prefer an easy challenge, Trooper which is the standard experience and Veteran, which increases Arachnids health and damage. Before the start of the game, you can join a team of max 4 players and choose your trooper class between Assault, Support and Defense. Each class offers its own playstyle, with a different set of weapons and perks that are unlocked after ranking up. Not all the equipment is available in the early access version and the game could really do with some more weapons because higher ranks don’t unlock anything new right now.

Combat takes place in massive maps featuring countless giant Arachnids running at you. The gunplay is quite satisfying and gives a different feedback with each weapon, while the movements feel a bit janky, particularly if you are playing as a Bastion, which is the slowest (but strongest) operator available. Enemy variety is decent, with five types of bugs (Warrior, Drone, Gunner, Grenadier and Tiger Elite) that often attack in large groups. Each type uses different melee and ranged attacks, like shooting plasma from the distance. If you get injured you can be healed by other players for a short time, so being far away from them often results in certain death. When this happens, you respawn back at the base, but I think there should be an option to spawn closer to your team (like in Battlefield). Friendly fire is always activated and I love it because it only adds a little damage yet it makes precise aiming much more important, especially when everyone is running in front of you.

When all players work together the game can be really fun, even hilarious thanks to the proximity voice chat. It gets even more fun when they all start using their building tool to create defensive objects for the base, such as walls, towers and barriers. I can see this feature being further expanded in the future with more buildings and deadly traps, which would be great for the upcoming Horde mode as well. Once you have completed the mission, you and the team must run to the extraction point before the shuttles leave. This is when the game becomes really chaotic, with enemies appearing everywhere and players shooting at everything. This ending phase is simply awesome and requires players to work together to survive until they get extracted. The respawn function is locked during this phase, so dying means failure for you.

As an early access release, the game mostly runs fine and is greatly polished. The framerate only gets some hits during the final extraction moment, which is full of enemies and explosions. Understandably, there are some technical bugs and issues such as the game suddenly crashing, the screen going blank, your operator being stuck or falling out from the ship (which is hilarious by the way, so maybe don’t fix it). I’m sure that with the final release all these problems will be solved and hopefully the performance will be better too.

Starship Troopers: Extermination is a solid co-op FPS with lot of potential. There is clearly a need for more weapons and customization options, but it’s understandable at the current state and the game clearly shows locked items being in development. The large 16-player battles against giant bugs are seriously fun, even more so if you can get some friends to play with. The price is also fairly reasonable for the content offered and for what’s expected in the future, so if you are a fan of the movie or simple enjoy PvE shooters you must try this game.

Review written by Sonic Punk for Zeepond.com

Starship Troopers: Extermination Steam Store Page