Read our in-depth review of Starship Troopers Extermination and discover why this sci-fi action film is a must-see for any fan of the genre.Offworld’s PvE has finally released its 1.0 version, one with the same epicness as the eponymous movie, although with less self-parody and many performance problems.
I think it’s clear from what I’ve written over the years at this company that I like Starship Troopers . The work of Paul Verhoeven, who came from becoming a titan of science fiction with RoboCop and Total Recall , was a satire of the Vietnam War , but ultimately it was a satire of his own base work.
That novel by Robert A. Heinlein, much more serious and conditioned by its time, was parodied by Verhoeven to the point of nausea, and although it may be reducing it to the extreme, it gave life to the license until today. Finally, after a year in early access, the latest Starship Troopers game, Extermination , has been released in its version 1.0 and, after two weeks playing it , the truth is that I have hardly changed my opinion in relation to that already old version 0.4 of the game that I was able to try exactly twelve months ago, both for good and for bad. Is it recommendable? Let’s see it in its relevant analysis.
A massive multiplayer mode, arcade and with a veteran studio
After the release of Starship Troopers: Extermination in 2023, many, including myself, thought that the Offworld project would have a clear path to gain an important place in the market as Starship Troopers’ magnum opus, until its cousin arrived: Helldivers 2 . Now, with the arrival of its version 1.0, and with Helldivers 2 at a complex moment in its short life, many thought that perhaps Extermination could take the throne, but it never longed for competition. The reason is simple: although they drink from the same source, they advocate a different shooter concept , in this case a more arcade one .
Just like the previous versions, the core of the experience is its PvE multiplayer . This mode for 16 players and with an average of 300 enemies per game, Extermination is the best presentation of what the project is all about. Instead of being life-or-death games or with a counter on your neck like Helldivers 2, the idea is to complete chained objectives on a map of variable size and games of 30 to 40 minutes . This means that they are hardly a series of commands – defend A, then collect the cargo in B, take it to C and extract in D – that are interspersed and mutated with certain missions or secondary tasks, and where the spirit of SQUAD shines with its own light, where everything is designed so that movement around the map generates small micro-narratives throughout the scenario.
The game advocates an arcade concept and lives and dies by it.
In this case, one of the details that I liked the most regarding what the development studio has kept or discarded from early access to version 1.0, is that the gameplay is unpolished , rough , with bursts of shots that raise the barrel of the gun to the clouds, and I love it ; Offworld emphasizes the very fact that we are not soldiers, but poor, inexperienced wretches recruited for an absurd war. Shooting and moving in Extermination is hard, and not because, like Helldivers 2, the game tries to be realistic, but because the game advocates an arcade concept and lives and dies for it . This makes killing 10 bugs in a round not considered a competitive achievement but a personal one, because you have shown that you have what it takes to survive.
The bug fights aren’t a Warhammer 40K- style manhood and testosterone experience , it’s made so that seeing the victory screen at the end of the game feels like a relief, as with just three hits you can end up dead on the ground. With the engineer, for example, whose grace lies in the use of a flamethrower , you can end up spending an entire canister of gas to kill one of the medium bugs , a warrior —there are a simple typology of arachnids, from small minions, warriors or elites, to authentic behemoths that shoot projectiles at spatial distance— leaving me at the mercy of the rest while I reloaded.
In fact, the way Extermination handles the appearance of bugs in the environment is so devilishly clever that I’m surprised I didn’t notice it during early access . The longer you spend on the planet , a hostile environment that doesn’t belong to you, the greater the number of bugs , something that is linked, in turn, to your progress. This creates a cocktail where the number of enemies scales as time goes by and you reach the end, instead of being based on predetermined spawn points . Of course, it’s not entirely perfect and there are times when many of the deaths are very frustrating because this spawn system is random, and generates hitboxes that you’ll crash into just a few seconds before the bug emerges from the ground, leaving you in the lurch.
To make living another day a little easier, Extermination has polished its class system horizontally and made some tweaks that weren’t there before to better define the activities of each class. There are six classes, from the simple advance guard or snipers to tanks. It’s not a hero shooter , although it does give off some of the aroma of the subgenre . Each of the six available classes has its own gameplay mechanics and advantages/disadvantages useful for battle. The problem is that, inherited from early access , Extermination still doesn’t let you change classes during the game, so it’s quite unfriendly to those who want to try out classes without opting for the tutorial mode.
Offworld knows how to give each of the six classes their weight in the game, and it does so based on individualization.
While it’s true that on paper they’re the same frightened soldier facing a horde of space spiders, Offworld knows how to give each of the six classes their weight in the game, and it does so based on individualization . Progression depends on each class, something that has permeated the weapons with a mastery system independent of each item, where each type of soldier will have skills and access to a different type of weapon. This, in other words, seeks to make team play crucial, but Offworld knows that this is a paradise, an Eden that not everyone can reach, so although individual, the classes work with astonishing autonomy . The development team has worked on Extermination so that the chaos of each game feels natural without that madness ending up affecting the gameplay.
The best part, without a doubt, is still the extraction in a ship. This is the final exam to pass the course, where you have to apply everything you have learned. Here the construction of structures is enabled , where we must erect just four walls and a couple of machine guns to contain dozens of bugs. Seeing so many enemies crowded at the doors while they try to enter, while the machine guns release violent bursts that scatter the pieces of these beings through the air, is of an impressive magnificence. However, having increased the scale of this playable moment has its drawbacks, and that is that the attacks are very situational and less common , with only a few minutes of combat. But what minutes!
A weak campaign mode that doesn’t contribute anything
However, one of those new and fresh-from-the-oven aspects of Extermination is its pseudo campaign mode. This option was not available during the 12 months of early access, so we are talking about one of the flagship contents of this new version, and although there is its charm in jumping into battle listening to Rico himself in your ear – yes, Casper Van Dien returns to play his most recognizable character – the idea is not entirely well structured .
As a mode inherited from multiplayer, these individual military operations are nothing more than what in those Call of Duty of the PS3 and Xbox 360 era, when the Activision saga was not at its best in terms of narrative, we could consider as the “tutorial of the game”. We are talking about 25 missions (between 90 minutes to 2 hours long) with mechanics taken from multiplayer while we improve our weapons, find new weapons or perks . Of course, and as they are underground expeditions in corseted maps, it is something that plays against Extermination itself, and is that while the license stands out for its massiveness, limiting the experience to small maps with few enemies per wave is a shot in the foot .
A version 1.0 with problems that need a prompt solution
It’s not that I’ve limited myself to good words throughout the analysis. I think I’ve found a good line of positive things where I could be punctilious, but there are no half measures here: the game is still green, perhaps less than in its early access , but worryingly green . While Extermination boasts an enviable matchmaking system and crossplay, where I have only been able to count a couple of problems in the more than 15 hours played, I cannot say the same about the performance and bugs.
Without AMD frame generation , but with DLSS and FSR to offset the drop in FPS, Extermination’s most epic moments deal a worrying performance blow, something that is a trademark of Unreal Engine 5. With an RTX 3060 Ti, 32GB of RAM and an i5 12400 – the game requires 16GB, a GTX 1070 and an Intel i7-8700K – the FPS ranges from 60 in the least stressful moments, to just 25 FPS in the busiest ones . Much of the blame goes to Nanite and Lumen . The game, although at times it may not seem like it, uses virtualization for geometry and dynamic global illumination to create less flat and vivid environments, and it shows. Although Lumen can be disabled, something I recommend, the FPS rate is difficult to balance from our side .
5 things you should know:
- The game features a single-player class system, perfect for spending hours leveling up.
- There are 3 planets, but the maps are big enough.
- Multiplayer remains the best bet within the shooter.
- The campaign mode could have been more, and is easily forgettable.
- It continues to drag major optimization problems on PC.
The idea of having a big-budget Starship Troopers game was always a dream, and although this is not the case, the team at Offworld has known how to work well with their material. Parody and satire have no place in a game with as little narrative as Extermination, but chaos, lack of control and the lack of experience of the soldiers we control do. An experience so fun and epic that it is hard not to recommend it, although it is not made easy by the performance that could be greatly improved.