Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War Review—Service Guarantees Citizenship

Here’s Dr. Jay presenting Gameffine’s Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War review.

Starship Troopers, the bug-smashing, propaganda-bashing testosterone-pumping Verhoeven masterpiece, didn’t translate that well into video games. Well, go figure. Video game adaptations of films seldom pay off, and vice versa. Mayhap I’m making this out to be a total shitshow. It’s not. Starship Troopers fared better in terms of adaptations than some of its contemporaries. All four adaptations that were released range from bad to middling. Extermination had promise, but that was not realized to its fullest. Enter Auroch Digital. The developers already proved they had what it takes to make a good FPS with 2023’s Warhammer 40k: Boltgun, which also ended up being one of the best 40k games ever made. They’ve now turned their eyes towards Starship Troopers with Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War, a retro-inspired FPS all about doing your part, taking the fight to the enemy, and procuring the prized citizenship! So, the real question is simple: will Ultimate Bug War finally let players do their part properly?

Understanding the Assignment

Boltgun was advertised as an FPS with an old-school approach to its design philosophy. When it was released, however, it was evident that the game had more similarities with Doom 2016 than with Quake, especially when it came to the encounter design. Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug, however, is old-school throughout. This being a first-person shooter, all the usual suspects are present—an assortment of beefy weapons, hundreds of enemies, and kickass single-player campaign(s).

For the first time, Ultimate Bug War lets the player get into the headspace of the other side in this perpetual conflict. That’s right, there’s not one but two fully fledged campaigns available from the get-go. The human campaign centers around Major Samantha “Sammy” Dietz, a fresh face thrown headfirst into the horrors of war, and tracks her journey from an enthusiastic cannon fodder to a grizzled survivor. Guns feel good to shoot, and enemies die satisfyingly. What more can you ask for?

The second campaign focuses on the elite assassin bug and lets you see the same missions from the bug’s POV. Of course, playing for the opposition would be treachery. Thus, these missions are presented as simulations of “what if” scenarios developed to better prepare the Marines for what they have in store. What’s interesting is that the bug campaign uses a third-person perspective and lets you switch between various morphological forms to wreak maximum havoc. Fly like a bird, sting like a bug.

Putting on the Other Shoe

It wasn’t until I played Ultimate Bug War that I realized how much I had missed games with multiple converging campaigns like those in the AVP titles. Another source of inspiration appears to be games like Medal of Honor: Airborne and Far Cry, because the game’s maps are huge and are filled with objectives you can complete in any order. There are 7 human missions and 5 bug missions to play through, each taking place in huge warzones. The human missions are structured like traditional military campaigns and see Dietz tasked with accomplishing a variety of objectives, like clearing chokepoints, procuring armaments, assassinating enemies, and holding out against wave after wave of enemies.

The bug simulations task the assassin bug with “terrorizing” multiple strategic points in each map. This basically means to assist other bugs in causing enough damage to United Citizen Federation facilities that they shut down. Compared to the human missions, however, these segments tend to become repetitive, as both the objectives and the methods of achieving them remain largely unchanged. In practice, you end up doing the same thing across every map.

The human missions remain the main highlight of Ultimate Bug War. Other than the standard shooty-shooty fare, there are plenty of options to take on enemies. For starters, Dietz is a well-oiled cog in a machine and needs other cogs to work efficiently. AI marine sprites will constantly make their landing and assist you in taking down the never-ending hordes (to mixed results). Dietz can call in tactical support pods to resupply as well as experiment with random weapon spawns. Moreover, she can be equipped with one-use BFG-like tools such as missile strikes, tactical nukes, gas bombs, and more. Finally, Ultimate Bug lets Dietz pilot the Razorback M7 mech, a towering force of man-made destruction. Fortunately, the use of these tools of mass destruction is balanced by the challenging enemy types that almost always outnumber you.

On the Nose

Unlike most Boomer Shooters, where the story is purposefully minimal or unintrusive, Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War takes the long way around. Capturing the spirit of Verhoeven’s anti-fascist, anti-jingoist satire through the use of witty FMV cutscenes starring none other than Casper Van Dien as General Johnny Rico in the flesh. Unlike the film’s politics that went over the original audience’s head (they go over a lot of people’s heads today as well), there’s no danger of misinterpretation with Ultimate Bug War. The cutscenes are intentionally over the top and filled with dialogue mocking pro-war propaganda. I’m not going to sit here and argue why war is bad, but if you’re someone who always thought Starship Troopers was a simple gung-ho action flick, then you’re in for a rude awakening.

As for its downsides, despite featuring two full-fledged campaigns, Ultimate Bug War is rather short. Depending on the difficulty and your willingness to search for secrets, the game can be completed in either 5 hours or 10. There are a handful of secrets hidden in each of the human missions. Since the maps are so big, it’s kind of a pain in the butt to find them organically. But if you do, they unlock optional stuff like replacing blood with confetti, enabling developer commentary, and more. The lack of a full map is also annoying. The UI is a bit cramped for my taste, and certain UI elements like the active reload system (welcome back, Gears of War) could use repositioning.

By far, however, the game’s biggest shortcomings lie in its enemy and squad AI. Your squadmates have an unfortunate habit of running directly into your line of fire and throwing themselves into danger for no apparent reason, while their combat effectiveness leaves much to be desired. The enemy AI, though functional, can also feel surprisingly dim-witted at times, particularly when elevation is involved. Simply climbing onto a ten-foot-high object is often enough to leave them struggling to land a hit. I’m also not a huge fan of the art style the devs have chosen. There’s too much visual clutter here for my tastes. But that’s just a “me” thing.

Real Talk

Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War is easily the closest the franchise has come to translating the chaotic spectacle and biting satire of Starship Troopers into video game form. Rough edges aside, Auroch Digital delivers a retro shooter that understands the assignment: kill bugs, survive the warzone, and chuckle at the military propaganda along the way. Citizenship, at last, might actually be within reach.

FINAL SCORE: 82/100