Starship Troopers: Extermination aims to capture the large-scale warfare of the 1997 film, but falls short in delivering a satisfying gaming experience.
I LOVE Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 film Starship Troopers. A gore-filled, hyper-violent yet overtly tongue-in-cheek anti-war film, it satirically adapts Robert A. Heinlein’s militaristic 1959 novel of the same name. Starship Troopers is an action-packed blockbuster featuring large-scale interplanetary battles between humanity and a seemingly endless horde of giant insects known as “Arachnids” or “Bugs.” It’s a premise perfect for video games, especially those involving fast-paced action, so it’s surprising that there have only been two first-person shooter games based on the IP. This includes a 2005 PC title (again, of the same name) and Starship Troopers: Extermination, which just launched out of Steam Early Access last Friday.
Starship Troopers: Extermination is a Games as a Service (GAS) game that allows up to 16 players to team up online and fight the Arachnid threat as one of six soldier classes across 8 different planets. It includes an optional solo tutorial campaign called “Special Operations Group,” in which players command a 4-person squad under the direction of Johnny Rico, voiced by the original actor, Casper Van Dien. Rico, now a decorated General, guides players over the radio through subterranean missions to clear out bug-infested tunnels and an Arachnid hive. The game’s main events, however, are the online missions and the Galactic Front.
“On console, Starship Troopers: Extermination does suffer from performance issues despite Knight’s Peak’s claims, with frequent framerate dips during intense battles.”
If you’ve played 2021’s Aliens: Fireteam Elite or the much more recent Helldivers 2, then you’ve definitely played Starship Troopers: Extermination before, but in a far more polished and visually impressive form. You likely had a lot more laughs doing it, too. While many of Starship Troopers’ signature lines pop up from time to time (e.g. “Do your part” or “This place crawls”), there’s barely any of the original movie’s sardonic wit, personality or soul to be found here. The fourth wall that made the source material relevant is absent.
Every soldier in the Deep Space Vanguard looks roughly the same, regardless of whether you choose the nimble ranger, the flamethrower-toting engineer, the long-range sniper, or any other class. You’re just a faceless, visor-wearing automaton, which fits the game’s conceit. However, Helldivers 2 handles this concept far better and with more style (that game even has capes!). Players who want to stand out in Starship Troopers: Extermination can purchase premium skins through the in-game store, but none of them are particularly dazzling.
Once players grind enough hours in a single class and collect enough XP, they can unlock class-specific perks, improved passive abilities, and weapon upgrades that differentiate their class from others. While this gives the impression that the game will improve with experience and teamwork, this ends up being an illusion due to several obstacles, ironically including its marquee feature—the “Carnage system.”
Starship Troopers: Extermination does manage to capture the scope and scale of Verhoeven’s 1997 film, with large environments, hordes of bugs, and explosions. This is thanks to the “Carnage system,” a proprietary tech from developer Knight’s Peak that allows fallen enemy and player corpses to populate the environment without affecting performance. Bug bodies continue to pile up unless destroyed, and can either obstruct paths or be used to access previously unreachable areas for both humans and Arachnids.
The downside, however, is that on console, Starship Troopers: Extermination does suffer from performance issues despite Knight’s Peak’s claims. Framerate fluctuations occur depending on the battle area size, the number of bugs (alive or dead), and the amount of action happening. In underground tunnels with fewer enemies, the framerate might hold at 60fps, but during large surface assaults or horde missions, it often dips below 30fps, even with performance settings prioritized. This results in a borderline playable experience, with input latency making controls feel floaty and unreliable when accuracy is most needed.
The issue worsens when the Carnage system interacts with AI pathfinding or player actions, which happens frequently. The AI pathfinding is some of the worst I’ve experienced this console generation. During Special Ops solo missions, your AI squadmates can get stuck on environmental objects and endlessly climb walls. If you’re not paying attention, you might advance several miles before realizing you’ve lost a squadmate or two.
“While the Carnage system creates impressive piles of Arachnid corpses, the interaction between players and debris is highly inconsistent, often causing players to get stuck.”
The only way to fix the problem is to individually walk up to the NPC and hold down the X Button briefly to issue a “Stay Here” command, then repeat the action again to instruct the squadmate to “Follow Me,” hopefully after which the squadmate will in fact obey. Even interacting with objects that are totally still can be tricky as players need to be standing at just the right distance for the button prompt to appear, but it’s even worse with your teammates. Unfortunately, these NPCs have a terrible habit of not staying still for more than a second, meaning that players will have to individually chase each offending squadmate down for up to an entire minute, potentially.
There’s no way to manually or automatically “teleport” stuck allies, nor can you team-kill NPCs with friendly fire to respawn them. Players are forced to either backtrack and coax their AI squadmates into following or press on without them, which becomes increasingly difficult as missions get harder. While your squadmates are mostly useful for handling weaker drones and reviving you in clutch situations, leaving them behind makes the mission significantly tougher.
Ironically, the Carnage system appears to be the culprit. The fresh bug corpses littering the battlefield create physical obstacles that the NPC AI in the Special Operations Group can’t navigate. Even when players destroy the corpses, the AI often behaves as if the obstacles are still there, making it impossible to reassemble your fireteam and sometimes requiring a mission restart. Honestly, players are better off skipping the solo campaign altogether once they’ve learned the basics.
“Starship Troopers: Extermination may have left Steam Early Access, but it still feels incomplete, with cut corners in both gameplay and presentation.”
The Carnage issues extend to online missions as well. While the system successfully creates impressive piles of Arachnid corpses that can help or hinder both sides, the interaction between players and the debris is highly inconsistent. For example, you might jump on top of an Arachnid corpse and stand on it, or you might just fall through it. Meleeing a corpse to clear the way can break it apart before the swing even connects. In other words, there’s no reliable behaviour between players and corpses, and the inconsistent hitboxes often result in players getting stuck, leading to failed extraction runs.
Even setting those issues aside, Starship Troopers: Extermination suffers from other problems that contribute to a poor experience. For instance, the Galactic Front mode, which requires players to join or start a “Company” (i.e., Clan) to contribute to shared goals, has no built-in way to recruit players from one’s friend list or request to join their company easily. After playing for a full weekend and sending out requests, I have yet to receive an invite or even a rejection.
Base building is a core part of Starship Troopers: Extermination, and while the Gears of War Horde fan in me appreciates that a good defense can be the best offense, the game manages to drain the fun out of it. Accessing build functions with a controller is frustratingly complex, and unless you’re playing as the Engineer class, base building and repair can only happen during specific breaks in the action—such as between Horde waves. Players get only 45 seconds to reload, heal, and start building, but by then, faster teammates have usually spent all the build currency, leaving you with nothing to work with. It’s highly frustrating.
Then there’s the presentation. Although the game has left Steam Early Access, it still looks and feels incomplete, with corners cut everywhere. Casper Van Dien voices General Rico, but you only hear him over the radio, accompanied by CG emotes of Rico barking commands between missions. Your squadmates have names and bios, but they barely talk, and when they do, it’s just repetitive lines. The one standout, aside from gameplay, is Scott Tobin’s orchestral soundtrack, which does a great job of capturing the spirit of the 1997 film.
Getting right down to the heart of it, I did not enjoy playing Starship Troopers: Extermination very much at all. I can’t speak for the PC version, but the Xbox Series X version plays and feels like a PC game that has been unceremoniously shoehorned onto current-gen consoles when it probably should have been released on PC exclusively. It’s either highly unoptimized or simply too heavy a game for the Xbox Series X to handle, or both, and a difficult recommendation in its current state for even the most die-hard Starship Trooper fan.
