Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! Review

Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! puts you in the middle of the fight! Join General Johnny Rico and Major Samantha “Sammy” Dietz in the United Citizen Federation in order to fight off the Arachnid menace from the planet of Klendathu looking to invade Earth.

Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! is a first person, boomer, shooter where all you have to do is aim and shoot. You’ll be dropped off on various areas of Earth, along with a few teammates, in order complete a set of objectives across the map before moving forward.

Objectives will vary from defending areas, activating switches or helping other members of your squad. In this chaos field setting, you’ll come across a bevvy of weapons. While you’ll start with a default machine gun that be converted into a shotgun, you’ll find sniper rifles, nuke launchers, heavy machine gun, grenade, flame grenades; among the 20+ weapons.

When you run out of ammo, or your health is really low, you can call a capsule with additional ammo, bare minimum, and health/armor refills. For additional support, you’ll be able to pick up beacons that will summon an NPC driven mech or phosphorus grenade that covers a mid-size area.

While I’ll elaborate a bit later, the game is hard. It has four difficulty levels, and even on Normal it can become incredibly brutal as you’re overwhelmed with swarms or projectiles from enemies you can’t see. While the developers clearly saw this coming, they added a God Mode and Unlimited ammo mode in the Accessibility feature. Trust me. It’s a godsend for the final boss.

As you progress through the game, you’ll unlock bug missions. You’ll be able to take control of the bugs in alternate missions where your mission is to terrorize and annihilate stations where soldiers are placed to defend. You’ll be able to play as a tank, which has three forms: flying, tank, and nimble. And when you reach a nest, you’ll spawn smaller bugs to help you cause chaos.

The game looks great and surprisingly combines two visual styles. While levels are vast 3D environments reminiscent of later boomer shooters from the late 90s/early 2000s, enemies and NPCs are 2D 16-bit pixelated characters. It works given the non serious tone of the game. Between missions, you’ll be treated to movie like cutscenes featuring General Johnny Rico and Major Samantha “Sammy” Dietz along with others characters looking to “recruit” you. On the audio side of things, nothing major to report. The soundtrack is minimal lost through the banter of your colleagues. Speaking of which, it’s enjoyable with a bit of humor.

The game does have a few nuisance. The first one being the repetitiveness of the objectives. It often feels like you’re doing the same thing in different levels. Another issue is the lack of vehicles. While the maps aren’t that huge, running/walking from one objective to another is tedious and boring. Thankfully, with a mech, you’ll go a bit faster.

You will die. Often. Mostly from cheap deaths as enemies will chip at your health from behind while shooting the Arachnids coming in front of you. Also, walking backwards while shooting at incoming enemies is a great way to get cornered and die. Also the lack of co-op multiplayer, online or couch, is a missed opportuniy.

Fans of first person shooters will definitely want to check out Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War!. It’s a fun, challenging (sometimes too much for its own good) and addictive shooter. While the objectives are repetitive and it’s easy to get yourself cornered and massacred, it’s balls to walls from start to finish. And the addition of Bugs missions offers some interesting diversity. Missed opportunity for multiplayer, but it does have that Earth Defense Force appeal. Highly recommended