Starship Troopers: Extermination Early Access Review

ign.com:

If you are a hardcore Starship Troopers fan, chances are I’ve already served with you on the front lines of Valaka in the early days of Starship Troopers: Extermination’s early access launch. For those of us who know who Casper Van Dien is, the long grind, very limited objectives and mission types, and old-school shooting were never going to deter us from doing our part, because working together as a team to blast enormous waves of bugs while building a base and then high-tailing it to safety has a powerful draw. But for those who don’t, there may not be much reason to drop in just yet.

Decades after the events of Paul Veerhoven’s cult sci-fi classic Starship Troopers, the arachnid threat still looms large and threatens the safety of humankind every minute of every day. Want to know more? Well, Extermination doesn’t have much more story to tell than that, but it can at least answer the question of “What would it be like if you and 15 of your peers were dropped directly into the chaos?” Though the answer is at best inconclusive, but the base-building mechanics do add an interesting tower defense-style angle to its fun but otherwise straightforward running and gunning.

I think maybe the biggest letdown out of the gate for Extermination is that even though it very much looks like the 1997 movie, it lacks any of the satirical substance. There are plenty of references to the movie, from the soldiers’ kits to the news bulletins that blare in front of every new round to the soundtrack, but all resemblance is mostly skin deep. One could argue that the old-school shooter feel (it lacks the auto health regeneration and dash happy movement of modern shooters) and mandatory friendly fire could be seen as an attempt at satire, but that