Starship Troopers: Extermination - Early Access Review
Starship Troopers: Extermination developed by Offworld Industries is a new 16 player co-op horde shooter set in the Starship Troopers universe, though based more on the original movie from 1997 rather than the book or the movie sequels that followed. The game has just been released into early access and thanks to Offworld I was given a chance to test the game out.
The game places you and 15 of your fellow troopers on the planet Valaka to liberate a deep space mining colony that has been infiltrated by space arachnids, or bugs as they are usually referred to in the Starship Troopers franchise. To liberate the planet you are tasked with several objectives that you must complete which can range from securing certain areas of the planet whilst holding off attacks from various space arachnids, having to refine minerals and bring them safely back to a designated point in order to power up machinery and also stamping out various elite bugs that infest certain places on the map. Once you complete a few of these objectives a dropship will deploy what is known as an ARC on the map which you must defend for a certain amount of time as it gathers data from the planet, you do this by helping your fellow troopers build a protective base around the ARC including towers, walls and bunkers and have a limited amount of time to build these constructions before all hell breaks loose.
Your base will then be attacked by swarms and waves of enemies that will put your defences to the test and it is up to you and your 15 fellow troopers to exterminate these threats whilst rebuilding parts of your base that get destroyed by the bugs, the base defence portion of the game is utterly chaotic and also incredibly fun as you and your team mates coordinate to exterminate wave after wave of bugs. Once you have defended your base then you will face a mad rush to your extraction ship in order to exfil from the planet and earn bonus XP for completing the mission. The game also features both team and proximity voice chat which is useful for both coordinating your defence and attacks but can also reach hilarious heights when your team mates are memeing it up and screaming out quotes from the movie as they rain down hell fire on waves of attacking bugs, “I’M DOING MY PART!”
Before entering the fray you can select what kind of operative you want to play from three available classes Assault (Hunter), Support (Operator) and Defence (Bastion) each of these classes have different weapons and perks such as healing, ammo crate crops and special grenades that can be unlocked as you level up and progress through the class. I spent the majority of time playing the hunter class and had a ball being on the frontlines emptying clip after clip from my carbine rifle into bugs and throwing out deadly plasma grenades at packs of enemies that explode on impact and set fire to them. It is not only the troopers that have classes though as there are variations in the classes of arachnids that you will face as well, with the plasma grenadier and tiger elite bugs being the deadlier threats on the battlefield and smart teams will work together to focus their fire on these enemies to take them out before they can do significant damage to their base or other players on the battlefield.
Starship Troopers: Extermination is really barebones at the moment and features only two game modes, which really aren’t that different from each other and only features one location for both of these modes and whilst both of these modes are an absolute blast to play especially when you get a team that are willing to have a banter via in game voice chat I can see the limited modes becoming stale rather quickly so hopefully the developers have plans to add new locations and modes to the game in the not too distant future. Graphically the game won’t set the world on fire but the sparse desolate landscapes suit the games setting well as do the arachnid models that inhabit the levels. The gunplay feels incredibly tuned and all guns are incredibly fun to use, they sound great and feel like they have proper weight to them both when they are fired and when they hit enemies. The game also runs incredibly smoothly for the most part but can slow down to a crawl when there are masses of bugs on screen at the one time, hopefully this can be optimised in future updates.
What you get with Starship Troopers: Extermination is basic at the moment but it feels like this is the foundation for an incredible game if the developers can keep adding game modes, classes, locations and also progression through further weapons and cosmetics to the game. I seriously have not had this much fun playing a game in years and I am not even a massive fan of the Starship Troopers franchise, Offworld Industries will have a massive hit on their hands here if they play their cards right and I cannot wait to see what future additions will be added to the game.
The game is in early access and as such, parts of it will change between now and the full release. As such we are unable to provide a score for the game. If you wish to play the game now and provide your feedback, you can get it via Steam.
