With thanks to the folks at Offworld Industries, we’ve been taking a look at their new Early Access release of Starship Troopers: Extermination. As ever, we’re not providing full scores due to the ongoing nature of early access development. Instead we’ll run down the basics for Extermination, and let you know how the title plays right now. Find the full review video below and keep reading for our extended Early Access written review. If you prefer an RTS, we heartily recommend you check out the Starship Troopers Terran Command strategy title, which released earlier this year.
The Basics – What is Starship Troopers: Extermination About?
This licensed first-person shooter sees you battling against waves of arachnids as a part of the Mobile Infantry. As a work in progress, Starship Troopers: Extermination has taken a light approach, with three trooper types and only two mission types at the time of writing. This has actually been fairly successful, allowing Offworld Industries to focus on the main build, which is (for the most part) pretty solid.
In Extermination you’ll do your part within a platoon of up to 16 players, with the mobile infantry dropping planetside to take the battle to the bugs. To do so, you’ll need to blend combat with resource retrieval and a little light construction work. Forward advances and setup of bases will take a lot of teamwork, but it’s been refreshing to see that most players are (even if they don’t have communication capabilities) really pulling together as one team.
Starship Troopers: Extermination is a fully-licensed title, which really aligns well with the overall feel of the outstanding ‘90s film. As you drop with the mobile infantry, you’ll need to rely heavily on your Morita assault rifle as well as the vanguard troopers around you. In doing so, you’ll face off against countless bugs, featuring a good variety of different enemies. Most of these will be instantly recognisable from the film series, including Drones, Warriors, Tigers and Plasma bugs.
As an early access title, there’s obviously a little way to go here, but we’re already seeing placeholders in a number of areas. This includes within loadouts, game modes and difficulty options, where Offworld Industries are obviously planning ahead and teasing glimpses of future development. The title also has an incredibly busy Discord server, where players can seek support, meet up for games and put forward their own suggestions for additions or changes.
Is Starship Troopers: Extermination Safe for Children?
Starship Troopers: Extermination isn’t currently rated by PEGI or the ESRB. As you may expect, there’s a lot of violence and alien gore in this one. In addition to this, the arachnid horde comes thick and fast, which can feel overwhelming and at times would be a little frightening for young ones.
Especially with the knowledge that the developers are adding to this daily, we can only expect the effects and various weapons to get a little more gory. While we’re not giving it a final rating just yet, Extermination is not one which we’re happy to play in front of our micro-bandits.
Is Starship Troopers: Extermination Accessible?
Starship Troopers: Extermination does come with some difficulty levels, and it’s been great to see that random players do seem to work well together to overcome the arachnid menace. There aren’t a great deal of accessibility options currently, and we’re hoping to see it improve throughout development.
The Run Down – Our Five-Point Rating for Starship Troopers: Extermination
In terms of gameplay, we’ve really enjoyed the battles we’ve played so far. It would be great to see a variation in weapons and abilities, and by the looks of it these are coming to the title if loadout screens carry on as expected. The gameplay really captures the spirit of the film’s mobile infantry, with overwhelming waves of arachnid aliens bearing down on you. The switch between combat and building feels a little awkward at the moment, but having the ability to have multiple people working on placing and constructing is another thing that seems to bring people together and overall while it’s fairly repetitive, it’s also quite fun.
Visuals are also pretty solid for the most part, especially considering the early access nature. The frame rate drops towards the end of battles can’t really be ignored, and with so many bugs and troopers involved this will need some ongoing optimisation as well. Outside that, though, things are looking pretty decent most of the time.
Audio is brilliant in the title so far, from in-game call outs to the epic music, things are really sounding nice. Towards the end of battles, while the frame rate drops a little, the soundtrack swells to make you feel absolutely heroic, and it’s very welcome.
Narrative is a little lacking so far, with the title simply consisting of online objective based co-op multiplayer. It would be nice to see a story developed here, but there is nothing in game now, shortly after early access release.
Replay we think will really grow, but at the moment there are a limited number of options, as you should expect with this kind of alpha slash beta gameplay. With that said, though, it’s definitely fun to jump in, and I’ve been sucked into another game over and over, even though at the moment things are pretty repetitive.
Overall, things are looking good for Starship Troopers: Extermination. The team has laid a really nice foundation, and it’ll be great to see things adding on to this as development continues. If you are good with early access titles in general, it’s definitely worth hopping into this one if you like the concept. We’ll be keeping a close eye on things, to bring you our full review after the title goes gold. Keep an eye out here and we’ll be giving you more info on Starship Troopers Extermination a little closer to release.
As ever, to provide this preview and common-sense parent’s guide, we received free copies of Starship Troopers: Extermination from the folks at Offworld Industries.
