Starship Troopers: Extermination Preview

The planet Valaka has been overtaken by the bug threat — the Arachnids — and it is up to you, your trusty rifle, building tool, and your fellow troopers to survive the hostile environment. Can you keep your fellow soldiers alive and complete the objectives long enough for the drop ship to come to pick you up?

 

Starship Troopers: Extermination is a 16-player co-op title in which you will play as one of the soldiers in the Deep Space Vanguard exploring, colonising, and destroying the Arachnid threat. You will drop into each match, complete the objectives, and survive long enough to get in the drop ship. But before all that, you'll first need to select your character and Loadout.

 

Each match starts as you select your character from a choice of three classes — Hunter, Bastion, and Operator. Each one is equipped with its own ability, starting weapon, and even perks and utilities you can unlock later on (more on that in a bit). I'd heavily recommend trying each one to get a feel for their abilities and starting weapon before you focus all of your time and effort into one, as you might be surprised by which one you'll like the most!

 

 

The classes essentially boil down to your traditional MMO archetypes, with the Hunter having better mobility for aggressive play, the Bastion having heavier armour to sustain blows, and the Operator being support in all forms: healing, restocking, and building. Though you might be inclined to one, trying them all out is not only beneficial to make the right choice (as I found that my fellow soldiers would often default to Hunter), but you can also learn how each one benefits on the battlefield.

 

None of the classes are inherently weak, though their weapons can vary in usefulness greatly. I found the Bastion's second unlock, the Morita MK3 SAW, had recoil that was unpredictable and downright unplayable, while the Operator was great all-around and quickly became my favourite and go-to class.

 

After selecting your class, you can then choose which of the teams you'll belong to; all of your three allies in the group will light up in yellow for easier access and communication. This isn't as important in the game's Recruit (Easy) difficulty, but harder difficulties will require better teamwork, and you'll soon find the usefulness of having a squad to depend on.

 

 

As a multiplayer shooter, I strongly recommend playing Starship Troopers: Extermination with a group of friends — playing with 15 quiet strangers doesn't feel nearly as gratifying as one, two, or three close friends. The game was at its best when others used the push-to-talk functionality both to coordinate with others and tell the occasional joke. Between coordinating where to defend and communicating threats, the more people you play with, the better time you will have dealing with the Arachnid threat — and later on, you'll need it.

 

The Early Access — version 0.2.0.130221.138, which is the version this preview is based on — comes with five different Bug variants for you to face, from the feeble Drones to the menacing and ever-threatening Plasma Grenadier. Each match starts easy, with fighting basic bugs and weak foes as you go through the simpler objectives, but soon enough — two or three goals later — you will start facing harder foes, until you reach the epic finale of building a base, reinforcing it, and enduring the hordes of enemies as you wait for a dropship to come and save you from the planet.

 

This is where communication comes into play, and it isn't strictly verbal, either, as you can use the pinging system to inform your allies of critical targets. The use of the microphone is expertly incorporated with a push-to-talk button that connects either your Team (the one you select at the start of the game) or Proximity.

 

 

Hunkering down into a base and defending it with 15 other soldiers makes for a great finale, though it becomes difficult to coordinate different players with visions for a base, where eventually the ammo crates aren't scattered properly, no one placed electric fences, and damn it, why is South West unprotected?! This is all to say that communication and proper teamwork becomes difficult when you're playing with 15 other players, some of which take the extermination of Bugs a bit too seriously and forget to complete the actual objective (because, really, you need to get inside the damn dropship!). With a limited quantity of some buildings, it can become difficult to use the time properly to strategise defence points, and it quickly stops being an epic formation of soldiers, and instead, it’s just a group of scared gamers trying to fumble about and make the vision of the base they believe it should be.

 

After you've finished the match, which lasts about 10 minutes each, you can then unlock new items for your Loadout, including new weapons, both primary and secondary, utility tools, grenades, and perks unique to each class. Building your class is great, but with only a few items per option, Starship Troopers: Extermination quickly runs out of unlockables, and the grind stops being as satisfying. This isn't necessarily a complaint — as an incomplete game is to be expected of a very early version of the Early Access — but it does mean that in just a few hours, you will run out of things to unlock.

 

The gameplay loop is satisfying and beginning your fight against the Arachnids is fun — Starship Troopers: Extermination is headed down a great path if it can keep up with player demand; there were one too many teams that had at least one member saying "that was awesome". And awesome it was, but the gameplay loop might become all too repetitive for those that wish to sit and binge it for hours on end.