Starship Troopers: Extermination review

Starship Troopers: Extermination is a first-person co-op base-defence-cum-shooter from Offworld Industries, set in the hyperviolent future of the 90’s movie, which itself took Robert A. Heinlein’s seminal sci-fi classic to a comical extreme. It’s a game about squadding up with some friends and dropping onto a hostile alien planet to mow down hordes of rampaging space bugs, which would feel way cooler if not for the rather large elephant currently trying to curl up on the other half of the chaise-longe. An elephant in a tie-dyed T-Shirt with the word “DEMOCRACY” emblazoned on the front.

To say Helldivers 2 stole Extermination’s thunder a little is an understatement, but also perhaps not wholly true. The fact that Helldivers 2 draws so many comparisons to Paul Verhoeven’s classic B-Movie-style actioner doesn’t help, but in truth there’s arguably more to Starship Troopers: Extermination. Casper van Dien’s in it, for a start.

Reprising his role as Jonny Rico, van Dien appears in stylised still images only, but delivers his lines with the aplomb of a guy who’s been waiting to get back into this role for decades. He acts as your mentor and guide, giving you mission briefings and detailing objectives on-mission.

The solo campaign is, sadly, not up to much. You’ll head into bug-infested worlds with a squad of fairly useless AI bots, carry out mostly simple, signposted objectives and clear out swarms of Arachnids as they spawn. The enemy AI is set to charge or shoot with no grey areas, to the point that they kind of get stuck on you as they try to occupy the same time and space. There’s no way to see the animations properly as once the bugs get up close your vision is obscured and all you can do is shoot blindly and swat with your weaksauce melee attack.

You can select a class and loadout at the start of each engagement, which subtly alter the way you play by giving you access to different stats and special abilities, activated on a cooldown. In the solo campaign it feels a little pointless, and makes much more sense when you play with others online. The difference between modes is stark, as the multiplayer isn’t beholden to dodgy AI or dreary walks between objectives, and feels altogether more frantic and exciting.

In either mods there’s an emphasis on building defences. You have a build menu and will be directed to drop bunkers, ore-extractors, ammo crates, and defensive walls and towers, and many objectives revolve around holding these positions or transporting the fruits of your labour from one point to another. Bugs can and will spring up randomly, burrowing up out of the ground to charge at you en-masse, and teamwork is essential for many mission types.

Weirdly, though, the base-building never quite stuck for me. I always forgot I could do it unless the game reminded me, or someone in my squad got carried away putting up a three-bed semi-detached with a lawn-mounted Gatling turret. Just kidding, you can’t build that, but you can erect endless grey walls for the Arachnids to pile over like giant angry ants.

If anything, though, my biggest gripe with Starship Troopers: Extermination is that the shooting doesn’t feel fun. The guns lack a meaty kick, enemies ragdoll before you like you’re blowing down toys, and they hurtle towards you in such a predictable way that there isn’t much time for nuance. You just open fire until everything is dead and then move on. There’s a distinct lack of tactics unless you really coordinate with your team over the base-building and defence; outside of this it’s just an awful lot of shooting and fighting against the recoil.

Played with friends, Starship Troopers: Extermination is an enjoyable enough time-killer, but it really lacks the polish and panache of its most immediate rivals, and fails to capture the over-the-top spirit of the movie. It’s at its best when you’re dug in, defending your makeshift base from the never-ending hordes, and you don’t have to think of anything but where your next bullet is going.