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Soldiers of the Federation, it’s time to do your part and saddle up to take the fight to the Arachnids in Starship Troopers Extermination, a 16 player co-op first person shooter developed and published by Offworld Industries.
For those new to Starship Troopers, humans are in an interstellar war with an intelligent insect-like enemy known as Arachnids. The bugs attacked Earth with a meteor which killed millions, now humans are determined to wipe the Arachnids out and destroy their home planet of Klendathu. In the middle of this war is when Starship Troopers Extermination takes place.
Almost all of the enemies from the first film make a return such as Warriors, drones, inferno bugs and the plasma artillery bugs. Alongside these are a few new enemies such as the Tiger, a huge warrior variant that is difficult to kill, and gunners whose rapid fire will drop you rather quickly if you don’t take cover or kill them first. The only good bug is a dead bug!
With 6 classes to choose from, you battle the insect menace across several planets in 4 different multiplayer match types or fight Solo with an AI squad in short story missions.
The classes, which are Guardian, Demolisher, Sniper, Ranger, Engineer and Medic, each have two special class abilities that they start with. You can unlock further abilities as you level in the form of utilities and perks. The utilities are all class specific but a few of the perks are shared between all, such as the Magazine Bandolier which allows you to carry one or two extra magazines per gun depending on the type.
I Preferred the Guardian for its primary support gun the mk3 SAW for the large amount of ammunition it carries, and the Siege mode ability which drops a small shield around you that increases both your defence and weapon stability.
Each class can be customised in a number of ways, though almost all options are locked at the beginning of the game and can be unlocked by advancing the rank of your chosen class. There is already DLC for customising your armour and weapon skins if you’d rather not wait to make your trooper your own. Armour custom options are limited to changing the colour of your visor, adding a decal to your helmet and changing the colour of your uniform under your armour plates. I kinda liked this as we can personalise our trooper but still look like we belong to an actual army.
Weapons can only be customised by changing their skin and adding modifications.
Modifications will only unlock once they you have progressed so far with your chosen weapon, and although your level/rank will increase and new guns and perks can be unlocked by playing Solo as well as multiplayer, your guns will only progress through use in multiplayer matches.
The four match types are generated by the game in varying difficulties, some with added threats like increased numbers of elite enemies, and renew every hour. Your choices are Advance and secure, where you capture territory and move on until the final point where you have to build a base to survive the bug onslaught until retrieval. Horde, where you face 10 levels of increasingly difficult enemies. ARC defence, where you build a base around resource processors and have to survive until you have collected the resources to power them. And finally Hive Hunt, this one is different to the others as you only have 4 players and delve into bug infested tunnels to destroy their hive, and this is the only one that has no form of base building.
I preferred Horde myself as the base defence being the entire match reminded me of the scene from the film on planet P. The bugs bodies can even pile up and be climbed like in the film as they don’t disappear unless you use your melee attack to break them up. I used this to my advantage a few times when I found myself outside of the base as opening the gate is not a good idea, if there are bug bodies in front of it then it will not close properly due to the obstacles. Also the later levels feel more desperate as the bugs destroy some of your fortifications and you only have 30 seconds between each wave to rebuild and resupply.
You can join a company or create one of up to 30 players and fight on the Galactic Front feature. Playing missions in a company will give you intel, which can in turn be used as a currency by the company leadership to turn normal missions into company operations. In the Galactic Front tab you can see the bug threat level and global human casualties, bugs killed, intel gathered and operations completed. These are part of a season, at the end of which you will receive the spoils of war! cosmetic rewards for customising your trooper.
The solo play mode is tacked on as a tutorial with a story. There are 25 missions to complete, though the missions are very short and didn’t feel different enough for me to keep my interest long. In the story you are inducted into the Special Operations Group, or S.O.G, which is run by none other than Rico himself. Rico is now a General and is voiced by the actor who played him in the film which I thought was a nice nostalgic touch. Though the missions are repetitive, they are good for introducing you to the enemies you will fight in the larger multiplayer missions, especially the new ones. I did notice a persistent bug (of the technical kind, cease fire!) where one of the AI squad members will get stuck trying to move in one spot, leaving you a soldier down for the rest of that mission and possibly condemning you to failure.
The game does a good job of capturing the energy of Starship Troopers on the battlefield, with the similarity of the soundtrack and the way the enemies move and behave, throwing drones and warriors at you whilst the artillery bugs try to incinerate you from afar with bio-plasma and fire.
The graphics do let it down a bit and makes Starship Troopers look like an older game, you can change the settings to increase the quality, but if you do the frame rate will suffer. This mainly affects how you see other players but does make the scenery and enemies look far better.