So you wanted to be on a fast track to guaranteed citizenship and got yourself drafted for the the bug wars? We’ve all been there before, civilian. And many more will in the future.
But for now let’s take a dip in the bloodbath that is Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! demo (federation approved material). It offers up a single mission from an (at least) 8-mission long campaign, with hints of playable bug opposition as well. If the fancy main menu is to be believed, they would be presented as simulations.
The entire game is presented in a mixed sprite and 3D object mishmash that may turn away people who value consistency. Those of us who have spent way too many hours in DooM and its hundreds of WADs will feel right at home though. In fact, this game feels quite similar to one of developer Auroch Digital’s previous titles: Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun.
The mix of “low fidelity” textures and models makes the game look like it’s running on the GZDoom engine. Once you start moving and the action picks up the pace, your eyes glaze over and the rough edges smooth over. That’s how I would describe the entire experience: rough around the edges.
Despite being low-poly in presentation, the map is still rich with detail and made my precious 1080 Ti whine with the load being set upon her. Entire city streets are filled with nothing but debris and corpse sprites. You are given vague objectives to secure on a completely open map and it’s up to you to pick the order.
There seems to be a clash of design philosophies: On the one hand you have a horde of bugs to deal with and are given a big enough playing field to do so. On the other, you can only carry 6 mags for your standard rifle and rarely engage more than 5 bugs at a time.
I came in expecting Earth Defense Force, when in reality it plays like Call of Duty. I entered the level, saw a giant horde of 2D bug sprites coming towards me from the water, only to have a couple materialize into fully rendered enemies.
At least there’s variety in the bug roster. You have your regular warrior ants, Tankers (which will eat up your entire bullet supply unless you use a grenade trick from the movie), armored beetles, flying locust and more.
They’re all just as tanky as they were portrayed in the movies, so looking for lore-accurate weak-points is essential. Running out of ammo and going melee with a knife is no Buenos Aires. At first I was afraid, almost petrified, that all weapons are going to be permutations of the same standard rifle.
I mean the first 3 weapons I picked up were: rifle, rifle with scope and rifle with a different name. There’s a shotgun, but you only get 20 shots total, which is criminal for a game with island-sized anthills. The knockback did make me giggle. There are also energy-based weapons from later movies nobody watched.
When hand-held firepower is not enough, you can enter a walker mech or use one of many deploy-able air-drops. These can be anything from a joyful helicopter ride at the gunner’s seat to a local nuke. Be careful where you drop those flares, because some AoE are much bigger than you expect. So don’t be surprised if you drop a “Bombing Run” flare and suddenly everything around is menacingly marked in red.
Every action taken against the bugs nets you “Good Boy” points. Get enough and you’ll earn yourself a weapon/health drop straight out of Deep Rock Galactic. Unfortunately the game is single player only, so you won’t be able to “supply someone to death”.
This again plays into the juxtaposition of expectations for me. I understand that the feel they were going for here: a (somewhat) realistic depiction of a soldier in a surreal environment. The problem here is that Paul Verhoven heightened our expectations for bombastic action. Serious Sam would be a far more fitting example for this franchise to emulate than Medal of Honor.
That being said, you do feel a certain sense of “Oh my god, I can’t believe I just survived that” when you’re faced with giant bugs and all you have to defend yourself is a standard issue assault rifle. Oorah to ashes, sample file. Each soldier you meet on the battlefield has a first and last name, they tag along with you if you run across a stray squad. A certain sense of camaraderie can easily be developed if you want to. Until they stand in your way while you’re gaining speed in your walker mech. They’re not too bright and quite squishy.
The bugs aren’t carrying around any doctorates either. They tend to attack the closest targets with little to no prioritization. This is likely the main reason you’re able to survive tepid waves of bugs coming your way.
The open world nature of the level available in this demo made it easy to skedaddle away in case the bug forces became overwhelming. The level finale differentiates itself by locking you in a small area by encircling it with GIFs of stampeding warrior bugs. This way you can’t simply run away from your responsibilities and have to deal with the objective.
The cheesy voice lines and earnest FMVs may be the final point to win you over. The game may be advertised as a boomer-shooter, truth is it’s anything but. If you wanted to feel like a regular soldier, surviving incredible odds with your fellow humans against the xeno scum – play Helldivers 2.
But if your machine can’t quite handle it or you have a patriotic repulsion to invasive anti-cheat solutions (or simply no friends to play HD2 with) – check this one out. It’s rough right now, but the developers have a solid track record, I’m sure they’ll smooth out the edges where necessary by release.
Would you like to know more? Wishlist it, civilian!
This early demo build was given to us by Dotemu. Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! is set to launch across Windows PC (via Steam and GOG), Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, and PS5 on March 16th.
