Thank you Offworld Industries for sending us a copy of this game to preview!

Starship Troopers has been a series that I have been interested in ever since I was introduced to it and I’ve always been drawn towards games similar to it, but there has never been a proper match. Starship Troopers: Extermination tries really hard to be that game, plus a bit extra, but it is still too early for me to properly judge it. At the very least, this has the mowing down hordes of bugs action I've always craved. I mean, the only good bug is a dead bug after all.

Extermination is an online multiplayer class-based first person shooter (FPS) with a bit of base building added in to spice it up a bit more. As of writing this, there are only 3 classes, maybe 10 guns, 5 enemy types, and what felt like 1 map, or at least only 1 planet since the scenery felt all the same. Each of the 3 classes has a separate progression track that unlocks their weapons, equipment, throwables, and some passives. Each also has a unique skill that helps them fill more support, defense, or lone wolf roles. While the game currently has 5 enemies, it is more as if there are 3 types with one type having a small, regular, and elite version of it present.

One unique thing about this game is all the gamemodes currently present want 16 players present to start. Each player can join 1 of 5 squads of 4 players each. These smaller squads help sort out the mic situation of the multiplayer lobbies so you aren’t being constantly blasted by 15 other players talking at once. While these big lobbies can be nice, I have found the large number of players sometimes make it hard to tell what is going on, since objectives can be blitzed so easily, and to really feel challenged by a lot of the enemies since there’s a constant spray of bullets.

During my playtime I only felt like I encountered 1 map or planet. Every time it was a desert planet with ruins on it. Now, one time it could have been different, but that was the only time I played where I got a mission during the nighttime, but it was the same sort of objective. Now while this could be bad, it did seem to have us start and finish in different parts of the map, while revisiting certain areas, to sort of mix it up a bit. The part reused the most was the last objective which had us build defenses around an objective and hold out for a few minutes, but I do think that is due to having the ground be flatter and feature more of a grid to allow for the building to happen.

I have found the building quite fun. You have only a few pieces to choose from, but they are all nice, big structures that look directly out of the first movie. It was really fun to build in the building tutorial, but sadly it is a bit less fun/more chaotic in multiplayer with 15 other people also building. As for the matches themselves, I only ever got 2 different gamemodes, but they largely seemed the same. The first one had us building mining towers and bringing the resources back to the forward operating base, dropping it off, then heading to the next location to do it again. The other one was similar, but it seemed to keep dropping things that gave me a rocket launcher to use for the rest of the mission. Both types ended with us building a base to protect an objective and then heading to an evacuation point.

Overall, I think the look of the game is very on point. The weapons and buildable structures all look like something you’d see in the movies. They even include a little news segment covering the mission objectives, in the style of the movies, before each match which is really neat. Aside from that little cutscene, there isn’t much talking in the game. Your characters seem to talk some, but it is really quiet and sparse compared to everything else. If you have everyone’s mics turned off, the game is very quiet. I believe there was a bit of music, but it wasn’t anything that stood out to me. Everything controlled decently, though I do wish I could tweak the building a bit. It isn’t bad, but it is just so unlike other building systems I’m used to that I wasn’t the biggest fan of it.

During my time playing I did find a few issues. The biggest issue I experienced was the enemies loading into the map. For some reason during the first part of the matches enemies tend to spawn either near you or on top of you. There is usually a cloud of smoke that rises from the ground and then the enemies climb out very soon afterwards. Well sometimes these triggers don’t seem to happen and the enemies just sort of appear. I’ve also had times where I’ve ran into a bit of an invisible box where an enemy is spawning at, but nothing is there currently and I get stuck on it. The invisible boxes have been the most annoying thing since you do a lot of running moving between points and having fields with enemies spawning in stopping you is fairly annoying. I’m also not the biggest fan of the in mission UI. I’ve found it blending in with the somewhat blinding desert landscape for a lot of the game. I’ve also had a few issues with opening and closing the gates. They seem to lag a lot or either just not open. It’s been really frustrating trying to use them. Easier to just let the enemies tear down a wall and then rebuild than to open a gate.

As for moral concerns there is mostly a lot of killing with mowing down hordes of alien bugs. I believe there is some blood that also appears, but it is hard to tell with the number of corpses that get left behind after they are killed. I also believe the largest enemy, the plasma grenadier, explodes into chunks when killed. Some of the squads you can join have names like Demon, Hellfire, Ifrit, and Cerberus. The only other thing worth mentioning is open mics. Game is really built around using them, but that opens you up for Lord only knows what. There could have been some language said by the player characters, but their voices were so quiet I could never tell what was being said.

Currently, the game is very early and there isn’t that much here, but more is promised to be added in. At the moment I’m writing this there is an update announced for later this week (with another gamemode or map), announcement’s a bit vague, and modifiers for the enemies to mix things up a bit more. While that sounds neat, that still really isn't enough to make the game worth checking out. As it stands, I can’t really recommend the game to anyone at its current price, but I do think it will be a solid title once it gets out of early access.

-Paul Barnard (Betuor)