Platform(s): PC (version reviewed), PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series
Genre: First-Person Shooter, Boomer Shooter, Retro

Developer Auroch Digital has made a name for themselves in not only adapting board game intellectual properties into video games, but also creating one of the more prominent blast-from-the-past boomer shooters using a popular Games Workshop series. That title? Warhammer 40K: Boltgun, a colourful 2D first-person shooter that loves its aesthetics and action-frenetic pacing, wearing it loud and proud amidst the glut of multiplayer shooters out there stuck in contemporary eras.

The developer is given another monumental task: turn a movie IP into an easy-to-get-into shooter perfect for its 1997-and-later era. The result? The 2D-and-3D hybrid FPS title Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War!, exclamation mark and all with short-but-sweet gameplay to sate your boomer shooter jollies.

Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Citizen?

There’s no two-ways about it – all you do in Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! is go through eight missions of alien bug-killing and objective-sorting as an elite trooper named Samantha Dietz. You get dropped into a mission, be it a new planet or a continued series of strikes, and then tackle any three objectives in any order, culminating in a defense section or “boss arena” type situation where you gotta fight and evade enemy bug attacks and fire.

The game’s hook is the narrative. As you start, you’re greeted with high-quality live-action full motion video with an older Casper Van Dien playing his past role as Johnny Rico, telling you about the game being a recreation of classified missions that took place side-by-side with the first Starship Troopers movie. Everything is played straight from the intercom dialogue between your main character Sam and her handlers, to the PR back-and-forth between her and Johnny Rico, along with the ads that play in-between. And yes, they’re accompanied with the famous “Would You Like To Know More?” prompt. They’re glorious to watch as it adheres to the satirical nature of the Paul Verhouven reinterpretation of the series, being as absurd as humanly possible.

Thankfully, the gameplay itself isn’t compromised. The controls are great, your trooper Sam is agile and quick with a gun, and the feel of firing the different regular weapons and special munitions are distinct enough and give you rewarding feedback when they hit small-and-or-big bugs. The enemy bugs you fight are varied, but they also come in droves and also surprise you at times. The regular Warrior Bugs have good amount of health and come in huge numbers, but they’re definitely cannon fodder and help act as meat shields for the other specialized bugs. Archer bugs can snipe you from vantage points, but they have glaring weaknesses in the form of their bright green abdomens. The Tank bugs take a LOT of damage and dish out game-ending flamethrower-ish attacks, but are slow and plodding, making them ripe for tactical nukes and airstrikes. Centurion bugs are fast, can charge at you, and are armoured, but they have weak spots at the back of their “tail”.

Combine all of these and more I haven’t mentioned, and you have a helluva swarm to deal with. Apart from crowd control and health preservation (these bugs hit hard and fast), the other challenging aspect of Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! is ammo management. You will run out of ammo frequently due to the numbers and infinite respawns of the opposition, so you need to figure out where ammo and health/armour crates are (via red flares). They are also limited, so you cannot rely on them too much.

And yes, you will die a lot especially in the harder difficulties. Hell, even Federation dropships and ordnance drops can kill you instantly upon impact, so do save often as you can mid-mission.

However, you can salute back at random troopers so they can join your squad, acting as extra meat shields and distractions for enemy bugs to protect you. Sometimes, they drop ammo in a pinch so you’ll survive and fight longer. The balance in gameplay is pretty fun and challenging enough to add tension in an already-chaotic space wartime scenario. What Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! lacks in style and flair, it makes it up with raw gunplay and emphasis on survivability and ammo conservation.

Once you’ve got your fill in playing as a human methodically, you can unleash chaos in Bug Mode. As you finish each campaign, you unlock a new Bug stage where you can play as the game’s primary antagonist, the Assassin Bug. This mode is the reverse of the Human campaign: just terrorize all three human military encampments on a map, then destroy the main base. Your Assassin Bug is fast, jumps high, and can morph between three different modes. Regular mode lets you use fast melee attacks and spring, as well as jump over short obstacles.

You can also recruit other Bugs nearby to help you out, or just be meat shields. The Fly Mode lets you jump super-high, glide downwards, detect destructible objects and targets with red highlights, and does a cool divebomb that destroys anything upon impact. The Tank Mode has cooldown and is slow, but lets you shoot out a destructive flamethrower that decimates anything from mechas to turrets super-fast. Playing as the Assassin Bug is really fun, to the point where I wish there were more levels and stages. Bug Mode is the 3D StarCraft action game Zerg Mode we were robbed of that could have been a bonus segment of the shelved StarCraft: Ghost FPS game.

In fact, I do wish there was a PvP mode where Humans and Bugs fought each other; perhaps in a future update, as developer Auroch is more focused on doing single-player shooter experiences.

Now Have Fun!

Still, this is one solid scifi military shooter aimed at a specific boomer shooter crowd. Developer Auroch took the obvious approach with the Starship Troopers license and made a clearly faithful representation of a 2000s-era shooter that’s non-stop gunning fun. With options to play as either a soldier of the Federation or even as the focused-on Assassin Bug, a fun slew of open-world-ish arena to do missions and kill bugs in, and tight controls along with a good amount of guns and tools, it’s a wonder why such a simple idea didn’t come to fruition in the first place. It can get a bit repetitive though as all missions are more or less the same with little variety to them. But it plays great and makes you feel good shooting at enemies, be it bugs or mind-controlled soldiers.

If you fancy a Helldivers 2-like experience but a little more basic and more accurate to the roots of its satire military origins in a particular FPS era where 2D and 3D collide ala Duke Nukem 3D, Powerslave, and Blood, you can’t beat this Starship Troopers game. Its adherence to an offline run-and-gun experience-slash-human-murdering-bug-alien-fantasy is pretty faithful and entertaining for its humble price tag. Now have fun, and that’s an order!

Pros

• Lovely retro aesthetics.
• Spot-on controls and shooting, with a good variety of superguns to use.
• Expansive semi-open areas to explore & mission freedom.
• Bug Mode.

Cons

• Can get repetitive.
• More entertaining on harder difficulties.

Final Score: 80/100

Review copy provided by publisher.