Usually, when a game is full of bugs, it’s a matter for concern. However, when it comes to Starship Troopers: Terran Command, it’s very, very good. For those unfamiliar with it, Starship Troopers is a film where humanity fights (and often loses) against swarms of giant, vicious bugs called Arachnids. It’s bombastic, silly, completely over the top, and actually makes for quite a good game. While there was an attempt to adapt it for a first-person-shooter years ago, it’s been until now that someone tried the obvious, and turned it into a real-time strategy game.
Or perhaps not, because ‘obvious’ is not the tack that the developers, The Aristocrats, have taken. In most RTS games there’s a campaign involving several factions that players can control, a skirmish mode, and multiplayer. Not so here. There’s an expansive single-player campaign, two challenge missions, and that’s about it. There’s no multiplayer, and only one playable faction: the humans. There’s also no real base-building, with players being restricted to outposts with limited building slots, which simply determine what type of trooper you can call down from orbit.
Usually, these would all be red flags, and I would be lying if I said I hadn’t fired up the game without a certain amount of apprehension. However, within minutes of playing the game, I realised just how misplaced my fears were. And not just for the first few minutes, but for the entirety of the roughly 40 hour campaign.
The missions themselves are fairly straight-forward such as clearing a region of bugs or surviving an oncoming horde, but there’s enough variety in both the maps and tools at your disposal, not to mention enemy types, to keep this very entertaining. Just when you think you’ve gotten the hang of your arsenal or the foes you’ll be facing, something new gets added to the mix. This might be troopers armed with futuristic energy-based weaponry or powersuits, or a vicious new type of bug (like the nearly unstoppable Royal Guard).
Gameplay-wise, the factions are, just like the films, decidedly lop-sided. The Terrans have limited numbers, but all their weapons are ranged and they have access to some serious firepower. The Arachnids are almost the complete opposite: nearly all of their bugs are melee based, and they come in swarms. This means most battles will resolve into the player attempting to draw up a decent battle-line and mow down the oncoming bugs before they reach your lines and make mincemeat of your men.
While this may sound simple, it quickly becomes an engaging test of tactical ability. Control of the environment is vital, as line of sight and elevation matters. Troops cannot fire through each other, and what is a lethally effective force on open ground can quickly get cut to ribbons if you find yourself in a tight space where only half of your men can fire. Your troops, the weapons they carry, and the foes they are facing are the other half of this equation. For example, flamethrower wielding engineers are great at locking Warrior bugs in place and creating bottlenecks, but will quickly get chomped by the more resilient Tiger bugs. Troops with E-pulse guns can quickly kill most bugs, but only at short distances, making them extremely vulnerable to the handful of ranged bugs. I lost more than one squad when, attempting to reach a pesky Spitter or Bombadier bug, they got surrounded and cut to pieces.
While losing a squad isn’t too much of a setback (you can also call in more troops from orbit) there is a limit to how many you can field at any given point. While this limit can be increased by capturing supplies and outposts, holding on to those outposts in more complicated. Bugs will launch attacks against them, and more than one mission was lost because I had foolishly left my bases unguarded and had no way to replenish the inevitable casualties. As such, encounters take on an almost puzzle-like quality, with players having to figure out the best way to use limited resources to overcome the obstacles placed in their way.
And that’s just on standard difficulty. Increasing the difficulty level sees the bugs become much more resistant. Now, this is usually an approach to difficulty that I can’t stand: it invariably ruins the feel of the game and makes battles more protracted, not more fun. Here, however, it actually works as it forces the player to change their tactics and be far more precise with the placement of troops and the use of their special abilities. It becomes a whole new, tougher challenge.
While the tactical side of gameplay is part of the fun, for me, the sheer spectacle was the other. The devs have perfectly captured the look and feel of the films, especially with the Arachnids. Put simply, the sight of a line of troopers firing on the oncoming horde, tracers flying, rockets exploding and grenades bursting, never gets old.
The Aristocrats have taken some interesting and risky decisions when it came to this game, but I’m happy to say they all paid off, and paid off big-time. If you’re looking for a fun, single-player focussed RTS game which gives generous servings of both tactics and spectacle, you need look no further. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some more bugs to squash. ■