Get in line, troopers! It’s a good day to kill some bugs, or die trying!
Now that we’re in the proper frame of mind, we can discuss Starship Troopers Ultimate Bug War!, which is based, unsurprisingly, on 1997’s classic sci-fi flick, Starship Troopers. That film, itself based on the book of the same name, is a campy satire of war set in a fascistic dystopian future where humanity is locked in an endless war with a race of murderous alien bugs.
Ultimate Bug War is a true boomer shooter, complete with pixelated graphics, unrelenting gunplay, and even FMV cutscenes that will bring a smile to the face of any 90s-era game fan. The game does a fantastic job replicating the look and feel of the movie, right down to Casper van Dien reprising his role as Johnny Rico in those nostalgia-inducing FMVs.
You Want to Live Forever?
In the game’s story, The Federation has released Ultimate Bug War to the people as a training tool, preparing children to become the next generation of real soldiers. You, as the player, are playing a simulation of the exploits of Trooper Sammy Dietz in the Bug War, tracing her footsteps across eight levels of bug-killing action, from basic training to the final boss fight on an alien planet. As you progress through the human missions, you’ll gradually get access to six levels where you play as the bugs themselves in an in-game simulation.
After the opening cut-scene, you’re thrown directly into basic training, where you’ll learn all the “basics” of boomer-shootering. There’s nothing too surprising here (machine guns, shotguns, pulse rifles, etc), but one mechanic I particularly enjoyed was the air-dropped supplies. In typical fashion, you’ll find health packs, weapons, and ammo scattered throughout each level. If you get in a pinch during a fight, though, all you have to do is toss a beacon, and within a few seconds, a pod comes crashing to the ground carrying everything you might need to survive the current encounter.
The beacon-tossing fun extends to special attacks that are essentially super-weapons, of which there is a nice selection. Orbital strikes, bombing runs, guided missiles (you do the guiding), door gunner (ala CoD’s AC-130 call-in), and more are available within the supply drops, but do be careful you’re not in the drop zone when these reach their destination.
The Only Good Bug Is a Dead Bug!
After basic training, your first real mission puts you on the Bug homeworld of Klendathu. You’re immediately tasked with defending the crew of a crashed transport, and the Warrior Bugs come at you from all angles. The surge of enemies before you even get your feet under you is overwhelming, but it sets the table for what you’ll face the rest of the game.
Each stage gives a relatively open map to explore, and several initial objectives to accomplish in whatever order you decide. Sometimes new objectives will evolve throughout a mission, so you may find yourself hustling across the stage to defend your base against a Bug breakout from underground or defend scientists so they can escape the enemy’s onslaught. The real highlights come when you get to use special weapons, like a personal nuke launcher that vaporizes enormous bugs in a satisfying mushroom cloud, or sticking satchel charges to explode the alien version of anti-aircraft guns.
With every level, it’s clear how much time and effort went into level design and the overall feel of combat. Developer Aurochs Digital has done a fantastic job recreating the look and feel of the movie: The friendly bases have the same steel panel look, the bugs move in exactly the same way, and the various bug species are all in attendance as well. You’ll mostly be facing hordes of Warrior Bugs, but Hoppers and Archers will spit acid at you as well, and massive specialty beasts like the fire-breathing Tankers and armored Centurions will put your trigger fingers to the test, early and often.
Everybody Fights. No One Quits.
What really put me in the middle of the fight is the continuous radio chatter that accompanies each battle. You’ll be talking back and forth with a few of your fellow soldiers, getting reports of what’s happening in the battle, and instructions when the mission objectives change. You’ll occasionally hear from other soldiers, begging for help or screaming out their dying exhortations. As you pass individual soldiers on the ground, you’ll hear snippets from them as well, jingoistic talk about how war has never been better or complaints when they accidentally get caught in your line of fire. It all works really well to sell the chaos of battle, the frantic reactions when Bugs unexpectedly show up at your feet. I never got tired of hearing this chatter, even if there was some repetition in what was said, because it made the world feel so alive. In fact, the missions where you play as the Bugs are sorely missing this part of the soundscape and I found them much less endearing as a result. They were fine for revealing useful tactics to deploy in the human missions (always take out bug nests), but they just didn’t offer the same kind of thrill.
The only quibbles I have with the game are minor at best, and more preferential than anything. The objective markers can be hard to see among the level architecture, so at times I was left spinning around until I could locate them. A level map would have been a great addition to see the objectives and also the routes to get there, as navigation wasn’t always immediately obvious. I would also have loved to be able to drop a smoke marker so I could return to find a certain specialty weapon or ammo cache when a Tanker or Centurion bug showed up later in a fight.
For the Boomers
Starship Troopers Ultimate Bug War was a blast to play, and exactly what I want from a boomer shooter: be fun, go hard, don’t overstay your welcome. There are good reasons to give it more than one playthrough, too: each level has secrets to find, there are four different difficulty levels, the satisfying brrrrr of your high score on the mission summary screen just begs you to give it another go, and the levels are even timed for the speed-running crowd.
I also appreciate that the developers have a lot to say about the militaristic state of the world, clearly referencing efforts by the US military branches to recruit young people through games such as Call of Duty and the Arma series. Cutscenes refer to special perks in basic training for those with the highest scores and unique recruitment offers when the game is finished, mimicking the rewards we crave for every round of Fortnite and every successful extraction in Tarkov. It’s all the more surreal and prescient with recent developments that make our society feel ever-closer to the kind of forever war depicted in the game. At one point, General Rico even exhorts players to remember the government-issued performance-enhancing drugs and anti-depressants for when you’re having “unpatriotic thoughts.”
It’s a great package of mindless fun with thought-provoking ideas underneath, like a summer blockbuster movie that still makes you think. We could all use more of both these days.
Thank you to our PR partners and Aurochs Digital for providing us review access to Starship Troopers Ultimate Bug War. You can find Seasoned Gaming’s review policy here.
