Killing bugs with friends in an intergalactic setting sounds incredibly fun. Helldivers 2 proved it, too. However, before Arrowhead’s PvE title existed on Steam, there was Starship Troopers: Extermination by Offshore.
The title first joined Early Access in May 2023 and is based on the popular IP of the same name. Starship Troopers was also the IP that inspired Helldivers 2, among other IPs like Terminator.
However, despite having enjoyed some aspects of the title, there is a reason why it is still in Early Access after more than a year. It has some glaring rough edges that spoil the experience. So, should one pick it up for the mindless fun and bug-hunting or wait until the rough edges have been chamfered?
Starship Troopers: Extermination releases on October 11, 2024, on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 (PS5), and PC.
Do Your Part as You Kill Bugs and Establish Dominance Over Them in Starship Troopers: Extermination
So when you finally get into Starship Troopers: Extermination (which can be an arduous process, as I will elaborate), you are taken to the incredibly non-intuitive tutorial. After playing the game for about 4 to 5 hours, I can account for the fact that the tutorial was unnecessarily complex and will overwhelm new players.
The only alternative left was to learn the hard way by participating in battles. However, once you manage to do that, the game is entertaining. I was surprised by how quickly I lost track of time.
The gunplay was surprisingly refined. However, a downside was that each class had the same starter weapon. It didn’t matter if you were a Guardian or a Sniper; you had the same weapon loadout, which was incredibly underwhelming.
The amount of teamwork required to succeed motivates Party members and other randoms in the lobby to work as a team. You will often be revived by players who do not speak the same language but stand alongside you.
Throwing grenades and watching them take out multiple bugs is the stuff dreams are made of. Also, despite playing in India, I got matches reasonably quickly (under 1:45 minutes of matchmaking). So, kudos to the game for ensuring that people in Asia aren’t excluded from the fun of killing bugs.
Starship Troopers: Extermination‘s graphics are okay but not overly impressive. The spider-like bugs appear daunting and dreadful; their blood spraying as you slay them creates a graphic spectacle.
Much of the game is building, repairing, and looking after your home base. You ensure that you build the required structures to keep bugs away from your base and repair all the damage it takes.
I played several missions and had immense fun. However, as I said in the intro, the game has a glaring lack of polish, which is visible once you give it 30 minutes or so.
Felt Frustrated With Starship Troopers: Extermination Despite All The Fluff
Starting from the top, when you first boot up Starship Troopers: Extermination, it asks you to validate your identity with the Epic Games launcher. Like many other gamers, I dislike the Epic Launcher because of how bloated it is, but I thought it would be a one-time thing; I was wrong.
Not only did it ask me to authenticate every time, but the authentication tested my patience by not letting me in. It was only till I fiddled with the options to make a new account that it worked. From then and there, one could instantly be put off by the title.
I mentioned how the building is a massive part of Starship Troopers: Extermination, but unfortunately, the entire building and repairing process is a pain. The UI is messed up, and pinpoint accuracy is required to place and repair your structure.
Despite killing many bugs, I often struggled to ‘Do My Part’ in Building. As expected, it left a sour taste in my mouth. However, the issues with the game do not end there.
There are pivotal gameplay inconsistencies, like you and the enemies jumping back to life magically. Starship Troopers: Extermination is also terribly optimized. It is baffling because it is not even built on Unreal Engine 5 and does not look like a ‘next-gen’ game.
Despite my beefy Ryzen 5 7600, RX 7800XT, and 32 GB of RAM set up, the FPS dropped to 48 even on Balanced settings at 1080p. Eventually, I had to turn on AMD’s FSR3 frame-gen and double my FPS while bearing some input lag to make my experience playable.
Is Starship Troopers: Extermination Good?
In my experience of playing the title, it is off to a good start; it isn’t anywhere close to being a title worth the total price, though. I cannot give it a solid recommendation for two huge reasons.
One being that it is unoptimized. Secondly, the gameplay inconsistency and the jarring UI need fixed ASAP. The game’s complete release is still several months away, and referring to the developer roadmap, performance updates and optimizations can be seen at the top of the to-do list.
Personally, I would recommend sitting this one out until it gets optimized, and then pick it up. Apart from that, if you have run out of good PvE FPS games and would like to jam with your buddies, then maybe give it a try so long as you are okay with the issues mentioned above.
