Chris InglisStarship Troopers: Extermination is a 16-player co-op FPS that puts you on the far-off front lines of an all-out battle against the Bugs! Developed by Offworld Industries, we are put to task in securing a sector, protecting resource mines, taking resources back to base and then pushing back against the swarms of attacking arachnids. Released on Steam early access on May 18, 2023, it’s got some jank in both alien movement and building placement, but it’s got a charm that feels like you’re playing in the movie. It also helps to have players in voice chat quoting the movie and shouting hilarious commands as we fight back against the swarm.
The deep-space mining colony on Planet Valaka, designation PE-59, has been decimated by the Arachnids—and the Vanguard has been sent in to take it back. As soon as dropship hits dirt, your trusty Morita Assault Rifle, build tool, and fellow Vanguard Troopers are all that will keep you alive while exploring the hostile surface of Valaka. We can play as three classes – Hunter, Operator, and Bastion, and Operator is my favourite as it is a support class that can heal. Weapon sounds are excellent, and everyone can revive a downed soldier. There is a tutorial which I recommend completing as it teaches you the basics of building and repairing base structures, harvesting resources and running the resource pods back to base.
I would have liked to have seen some aliens pop up during the tutorial, as currently there are none. Even if it’s just a couple that are easily dispatched, it would teach you how to handle them because my first game was a tough introduction. The ground starts to have rubble and dust bounce around shortly before the arachnids burst out of the sand. There are various types of arachnids in the game such as Drone, Warrior, Gunner, Plasma Grenadier, and Tiger Elite enemy Bugs, with more to come. Some even sit in the far distance lobbing huge projectiles that blow up in huge blue plumes of smoke and debris.
When loading up a regular multiplayer game, we are limited to just one scenario that seems have two mission variants. Once we get to rank 5, it unlocks a second game mode. The whole party must be rank 5 too, not just the leader. good to note is that queue wait times are usually only 10-20 seconds which is fantastic. I just hope the population hangs around through the early access period to release and beyond. In the first scenario, sometimes it’s a day mission and sometimes it’s at night. The night missions suffer from extremely bright torchlight from all players running together.
I set my brightness darker but is still lights everything up too brightly, and you cannot toggle the torch off. This is amplified when you are all trying to cram into the extraction dropship. We do need a torch but it’s field of light could be narrowed. This would create some great tension from not seeing everything in the darkness around you. The arachnids move super-fast, so when the objective changes and you are caught behind the main pack, you’re pretty much screwed as you cannot outrun the arachnids at all.
The general graphics are fantastic and the design of the bases, buildings and vehicles (that we can’t use) all look authentic from the movies. Looking up into the sky you see clouds, stars and planets and it looks awesome. The game runs very smooth and I only witnessed some drops in FPS when we were defending a base and the arachnids had broken through the walls. We are madly running around shooting everything, reviving teammates, trying to repair walls, and just barely surviving. It’s fast pace and action packed when you’re in the thick of it.
One big bug bear from our experience playing in this early access period is the fact that anyone can build anything in the base. This is good as it promotes working together to get things built faster, but what actually happens is that you will be halfway through building an outer wall, and someone will build a turret with a ladder halfway through it that creates gaps for the arachnid to get in. Or even worse, a player will just straight up delete the wall you just spend resources building, and then place down a turret or something that they think is better than what you built.
It can get frustrating but at the end of the day it all holds together until the shit hits the fan and the arachnids break through. If a wall is broken down, the blueprint remains there for a short time, so if you’re quick enough and aren’t being chewed up by arachnids, you can re-erect the wall to hold the arachnids back a bit longer. Once the timer runs down and the team can stay alive, you will then need to run to a dropship at an extraction point a short distance away.
At the dropships, a lot of players just hang at the doorway and continue to shoot arachnids. This is all well and good, but if everyone just jumped onto the dropship straight away, we would extract so much quicker. When you’re inside the dropship, you can see how many players out of 16 are required to fill the dropship. If there are straggles, you eventually get a 30 second warning before the dropship will just leave without you. I died a few times trying to get to the dropships but as long as majority of the team can extract, you will still get a victory. You earn more points if you extract alive obviously.
At the end of a game, you will have earned points for kills, revives, objectives and more, and slowly rank up your operatives. You can unlock new primary and secondary weapons, alternate gadgets and perks as you level up which gives good incentive to pick a class and stick to it. For an early access release, I am having a lot of fun in Starship Troopers: Extermination especially playing with mates over voice comms. Being Australia, I mostly enjoy playing with other American players that can do the movie quotes more authentically than I can, and it’s hilarious hearing the banter amongst the squad.
I am excited to see a development roadmap that is coming soon, and here is some developer information from the game’s steam page.
“Throughout Early Access, we will provide players with more weapons, an updated class leveling system as well as progression achievements and unlockable skins for both weapons and armor. On the enemy side, we plan on adding more Bugs including boss battles that require complex player coordination to defeat.”
“The full version of Starship Troopers: Extermination will span multiple planets ready to be liberated from the Arachnid Threat. This 1.0 launch build is planned to include additional weapons, enemy types, class progression upgrades, community events, and encounters. The player will have a diverse roster of customization options allowing them to tailor their troopers to fit their playstyle and experience.”
This early access review utilised Steam keys provided by Terminals/Evolve PR and Starship Troopers: Extermination is available now on Steam early access.
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