Starship Troopers Review

By John Walker Published 4 November, 2005

Suffice to say, John didn't lose his heart to this.

Version tested: PC

There is proof of an interventionist God. The most remarkable crash to date, locking up all sound from my PC into a sampled loop, freezing all controls, forcing a hard-reboot, has spectacularly rendered Starship Troopers unbootable. I am free, free to write the review.

It didn't start well, either. But before we get to that, it's time for a quick check that everyone's in line when it comes to the film this FPS is based upon. Verhoeven's film is, and this cannot be stressed enough for the hard of thinking, a SATIRE. The problem is, satire requires thought from your audience. Do your satire well enough, and those who aren't willing to engage their brain will confuse themselves, and start pronouncing the film as pro-war, all-American, or as has often been the case, fascist. To give Verhoeven his credit, he wasn't exactly subtle about it. The superb spoof propaganda adverts provide belly laughs, and really ought to make the point ever-so-slightly clear. But it's never better than when people attempt to speak the truth of the situation, and are drowned out by the gung-ho nonsense from the main cast. And it has Doogie Howser in it.

Sadly, included in the numbers of those who didn't really 'get' Starship Troopers are Strangelite, Which is only made more strange by the inclusion of clips from the film between missions, painfully containing all the information anyone might need to know that the Bugs are completely innocent in the interplanetary war, and that the forces of Earth are the bad guys. Low quality clips of the film, despite the game coming on DVD.

The bad beginnings. A hellishly long install ends in, "Do you want to check for updates?" Well, yes. But of course, no. Because the patch put out on the day of release achieved the impressive result of causing the game to refuse to acknowledge a disc in the drive. Uninstall. Another painfully long install. Boot.

A secret about reviewing PC games: you've got to be really careful when criticising poor graphics. With the complexity of PC innards, and the agony of driver conflicts, there's a reasonable likelihood that a game looking like the back end of a dog might be your own machine's fault. Solutions include keeping your computer full of very mainstream and up-to-date hardware, spending a couple of hours updating all your drivers just in case, then seeing how it runs on another machine. After that you buy a copy of the game from the shops in case it's a problem with the code sent by the developers. Another uninstall and install. Boot. And it's then, and only then, that you can say with any acuity: Starship Troopers looks like the back end of a dog.

'Starship Troopers' Screenshot 1

This is what the game looks like for the majority of time. Most of it taken up with the ridiculous red blur, and an alien's legs. 2005 everybody!

Which makes a mystery of exactly what it's doing with the minimum spec of a 2GHz CPU and 128Mb 3D card. Surely it can't be the boast of having dozens of enemies on screen at once? A year ago, sure - there's a boast. But today? And then the incredibly long development time of Troopers comes into stark relief. This is a three-year-old game, hastily updated for a more modern world.

As the back of the box explains, again demonstrating the game's complete lack of comprehension when it comes to the license, "Hesperus, a planet perilously close to Earth, has fallen to the bug menace." In other words, rather than recreate the film's story, it's the, "Er, it's five years later and something similar is happening," manoeuvre. Twelve missions throw you into the hordes of Bugs, with thinly veiled excuses for you to run from checkpoint to checkpoint armed only with infinite ammo and the slowest quick-load in the west.

What's clearly meant to happen is that you're overwhelmed by the incredible numbers of enemies on screen at once. What actually happens is you stand still with your finger on the mouse button, shooting at a hundred of the same enemy until either of you are dead, and then after 57 reloads, maybe trudge over to the next site of the same. Your survival is entirely at the discretion of the direction the Bugs run in, based on their complete lack of discernable AI. If you're lucky, they'll all charge a local rock, wedging their limbs miraculously through it, while you casually walk around them. If you're unlucky, they'll attack you from 360 degrees (the game forces you to stand out in the open frequently), those behind you killing you before you can take out the ones killing you from the front. Throw in the enormously original idea of having to defend another character, and then there's the joy of dying every time they decide to offer themselves as a sacrifice to any enemies they can run toward.

'Starship Troopers' Screenshot 2

Yes, it looks a bit like that bit in Half-Life. Yes, it looks like it too was made in 1998.

This might be more bearable if you could stab the quick-load, and oh, for the kick of it, quickly load. Instead, death forces you to wait while it loads a pointless screen playing a videoclip, with a voiceover swearing at you. Select load, select the savegame, and then wait for a good minute before it lets you die in a different direction. Manage to catch the quick-load before you die, and you can cut that time down to a mere 45 seconds. Sweeeet. To give the game its dues, there are dozens and dozens of hours of gameplay here. Unfortunately, it's just the same hours dozens and dozens of times. In my notes, I have, "Horrendous load times," scribbled down. Then there's a hyphen and, "Quickload!" added. Then later, beneath that a big star. And then six exclamation marks in a row. (This is all just above the capital lettered scrawling of "ENTIRELY MISSES THE POINT.")

Looking down the list, appearing twice due to both short-term memory loss and repeated frustration, "Jump useless." Tiny ridges on the ground prevent movement, and the jump just seems to facilitate standing on tiptoes. There's "voices crashing," referring to the ridiculous mess of in-game storytelling. Reaching a checkpoint triggers instructions from a fellow soldier, which are then spoken over almost every time by the shouting narrator. As a result, neither can be heard or understood. And finally there's, "Clipping on hills," which is a reminder to go on about slopes for a while.

Here's a useful tip in case you should ever be fighting against fifty arachnid bugs on a desolate planet, probably at night-time to hide how bloody awful it all looks (oh yeah - no gamma slider in the options - nice touch): Stand on a metal slope. Too intricate an object for the Bugs to manoeuvre, the mere act of being raised two inches from the ground can keep you safe from an army of armoured beasts, and able to pick them off one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by are these things respawning by one by one by one by no they seem to be thinning out by one by one by one by one by one by are there more coming from over the hill by one by one by one by one by one by thank God for that.

'Starship Troopers' Screenshot 3

Yeah, the whole dozens of enemies thing would look more impressive if they looked like more than black zigzags once they're twenty feet away.

Of course, it works against you as well. Running up slopes is a fraught exercise, with the game's impressive volume of clipping seeing you stuck on the ground with great regularity. Or on a wall. Or building. Or doorway.

There are simply no new ideas in Starship Troopers that make it worth your while. Never mind that it's horribly bugged (oh, ha ha ha), that the patch renders it immobile, or that it might even commit suicide completely. It's far too late in the day to be producing shooters this unimaginative. The FPS is already in trouble, worthwhile releases down to only two or three a year. Generating shoot-by-numbers generic crap with dated graphics and - oh, forgot this one - lag for movement both with the keyboard and the mouse, is a vast waste of time and money.

It is an exercise in immense frustration and painful tedium. When it works, and this feels a stupid sentence at this point, it does manifest the correct semiotic indicators of first-person shooting. You are mowing down literally hundreds of baddies with big metal guns. But that's it. And it isn't all that much. Oh, and did I mention that the jump is useless?

4 / 10

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About John Walker

Read more articles from John by visiting the John Walker archive page.

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Comments (44) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • frod. #1 6 years ago

    The Demo's absolutely shocking. For anyone lucky enough not to have played it its basically the scene from the film were thousands of bugs swarm over that base in the desert. Except its not thousands anymore. Its about 6.

    Totally agree with the review; the guns are weak, the difficulty levels absurd, it plays like a dog, and I swear Scientist Hunt managed to display more things on screen than this does. Utter garbage.

  • Kingsadist #2 6 years ago

    What upset me the most about the demo was that I never even managed to finish it.

    No, wait, thats a good thing....right?

  • Eldritch #3 6 years ago

    So, it's a bit of shite then?

  • PuffyPipe #4 6 years ago

    I saw a developers diary for this game on Bravo, Its a little company in the UK and they all looked so proud of there effort!

    Well I know what they look like now and they will never get me to download a crappy demo from there studios ever again.

    Cheshire should be nuked so we don't miss any of them.

  • Eldritch #5 6 years ago

    When will Empire finally close down?

  • LaundroMat #6 6 years ago

    I saw a developers diary for this game on Bravo, Its a little company in the UK and they all looked so proud of there effort!

    That must hurt :(
    I really don't understand that games like these are released at all. Surely someone there must've felt this game wasn't actually any good at all.

    (Oh, and yay for the intro paragraph. Verhoeven's desillusion with the USA + SF = movie heaven. Every time.)

  • Chtulie #7 6 years ago

    The film is the best sequel to robocop there ever was, set a hundred years or so later but definatly in the same sort of universe (having the same guy write the screenplay probably helped).

  • UncleLou #8 6 years ago

    it its basically the scene from the film were thousands of bugs swarm over that base in the desert. Except its not thousands anymore. Its about 6.


    lol!

  • kangarootoo #9 6 years ago

    Wow, I was really expecting to see a post on here saying something like "well IGPOXM gave it 9/10 and I like ST so I'm going to get it anyway".

    I tire of the number of times I've had people give ME shit for saying I liked ST because THEY entirely missed the point and thought it was some facist propaganda (actually its about twice, but all the same).

    The people who made ST2 (directed by the guy in charge of special effects on ST1, just to give you due warning) seemed to completely miss the point too.

  • kangarootoo #10 6 years ago

    "Cheshire should be nuked so we don't miss any of them."

    I need to wheel out my old "it may not be their fault" organ at this point and grind it like I've got a pair.

    It goes something like this. "All sorts of factors, publisher interferance, low investment due to strong franchise, out in time for Xmas" etc. Lets please not call the devs shit, when we don't know the back story.

  • doctor_nick #11 6 years ago

    Wonderful, great review. It actually sounds physically painful to have to play this game.

  • MrAtheist #12 6 years ago

    People give the film a load of shit because, as an adaptation of the book, it absolutely *sucks* (Neumeiers original script was called Bug Hunt and had nothing to do with the book as the producers of the project didnt think theyd get the rights).

  • Gurgeh #13 6 years ago

    The point is (as he has stated) Verhoeven HATES the book and all it stands for. That's why he made the film.

  • supercalifragilistic #14 6 years ago

    Well, I've bought this game and I think it does the film justice. It just sounds like the reviewer hasn't been laid in a while. that isn't a review it's just a nasty rant!
    If you like the film, then this game will be as closest to playing the real thing in my opinion!
    Edited by 1 at 04/11/05 @ 11:24

  • PuffyPipe #15 6 years ago

    Sorry for the comment then Kangarootoo...... I await there next release with a new optimism.

  • myrmican #16 6 years ago

    Lets please not call the devs shit, when we don't know the back story.

    They screwed up Starship Troopers! The control scheme blows goats! The weapons sound tinny and feel rubbish!

    They got nothing right about one of the best possible license to have! That takes a special degree of 'not giving a shit' about their own game.

    Strangelite is obviously run by mediocre 'tards who can't tell when a product is any good, and probably don't care anyway.

  • Xerx3s #17 6 years ago

    BUG'S! BUG'S! EVERYWHERE! ARGGHHH!

    /runs away from the game...

  • CowHunter #18 6 years ago

    I agree supercalafragaistic.

    He sound like a complete tool. has he even played past the frist three levels? I've bought it too and have a brand new alienware pc, runs like butter and looks awesome, I notice he flames the graphics but hasn't got any of the new screenshots in the gallery, well done you faggot!!!

  • LaundroMat #19 6 years ago

    I bet he gets a cent per post.

  • MrAtheist #20 6 years ago

    "The point is (as he has stated) Verhoeven HATES the book and all it stands for. That's why he made the film. "

    The book has nothing to do with all the "hey they dress as Nazis hint hint wink" stuff from the film. Have you read the book or just going from the common misconceptions flying around about the book and Heinlein himself? ;)

  • PearOfAnguish #21 6 years ago

    2GB CPU? :)

    /pedant

  • Gurgeh #22 6 years ago

    @"The book has nothing to do with all the "hey they dress as Nazis hint hint wink" stuff from the film. Have you read the book or just going from the common misconceptions flying around about the book and Heinlein himself? ;) "

    Regarding the book:

    ht tp://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/ftp/fedrlsvc.pdf

    Regarding the man:

    In 1958 the US considered suspending it's nuclear testing as the Soviet Union promised it would follow suit. Heinlein was opposed to this and created the "Patrick Henley League" to create public support for the US nuclear test program.

    The US suspended it's program but the Soviet Union did not. Heinlein was so infuriated by this that he stopped the novel he was writing and wrote "Starship Troopers" instead.

  • Rodafowa #23 6 years ago

    I've said it before and I'll say it again - Verhoeven really should stick to sci-fi.

    Total Recall, Starship Troopers, Robocop = Good to great.

    Showgirls, Basic Instinct, Pretty Much Everything Else = Piece of... well, you get the idea.

    Hollow Man is plainly the exception that proves the rule. Join us again next week, when our guest on Really Should Stick To Sci-Fi is Ridley "GI Jane" Scott.

  • Artemus #24 6 years ago

    it its basically the scene from the film were thousands of bugs swarm over that base in the desert. Except its not thousands anymore. Its about 6.

    Slight exaggeration there.

  • MrAtheist #25 6 years ago

    An hour 'Googling' and thats all you came up with? ;)

    Gifford is great, but I dont know what point you are trying to make with the piece or the quote, and how it relates to Verhoevens adaptation.

    Lets just bitch about the lack of powered armour instead! Who has the rights to the book? They might make us a good ST game. :)

  • kangarootoo #26 6 years ago

    @myrmican

    Did you actually read my post at all? Or was my sacasm a bit too much for you to decipher. I'll try again in plainer terms.

    There are lots of facotrs that govern the outcome of a title. A developer given total artistic control, an infinite sack of money and as much time as they want can THEN be blamed if the resulting title sucks.

    In this case we simply have no way of knowing what sort of budget, schedule, design control etc they were given by the publisher. We don't know what input if any the film company had.

    I'm not saying the devs are blameless, I'm simply saying we don't know for sure why the game turned out the way it did. Unless you are party to info the rest of us are not, in which case please share it.

  • kangarootoo #27 6 years ago

    @MrAtheist

    Heinlein really did believe in the two tier system, the civilian and citizen classes. He also through that a strong military force was key to any "great" nation. That is what Verheoven objects to (among other things).

    I'm not saying Heinlein was a nazi, but neither does Verheoven. He is using recognised iconography to exagerrate a point (which in the current climate is useful as it draw some nice comparisons) for those not sharp enough to spot the satirical refefences (although that still wasn't enough for many as already mentioned).

    I've read the book BTW.

  • Gurgeh #28 6 years ago

    "An hour 'Googling' and thats all you came up with? ;)

    Gifford is great, but I dont know what point you are trying to make with the piece or the quote, and how it relates to Verhoevens adaptation. "

    What is the point Heinlein is trying to make in the book? Why did he write it? If you can answer the questions and you'll see why Verhoeven (who grew up in an occupied country) made the film he did. If you read the piece you see why somone who likes Heinlein (which you seem to do) feels that he got it wrong with the book.

    I liked his books too. When I was 10.

  • MrAtheist #29 6 years ago

    @kanga

    The debate surrounding Heinlein, the man and his work, has raged for decades. Its not going to be resolved or advanced in a Eurogamer talkback about a poor game. :)

    I think Verhoeven is great, I rate Robocop a masterpiece (dont laugh). :) I dont really mind his take on the 'politics' of the book. The fact the mobile infantry went from one-man-tanks to 50 blokes walking around the desert with little machine guns winds me up more! ;)

  • BremXJones #30 6 years ago

    Re: " People give the film a load of shit because, as an adaptation of the book, it absolutely *sucks*"

    Yeah, I know this is a hilariously long running debate, but a word like sucks seems an unfair perjorative. Most film adaptations don't get the source text at all. Starship Troopers was interesting in that it completely got the source material... and despised it, satirised it and made it laughable. That's interesting in and of itself.

    I like both Book and Film as works of art.

    KG

  • Chtulie #31 6 years ago

    There's absolutely no shame in calling robocop a masterpiece, cos it is. The editing alone is an absolute masterpiece, the arc of the story is fantastic with a character examination unlike any other, it's a rare film that actually lets you crawl into a character's head. Especially the sequence where he walks into Dick Jones' office where you see both what he sees and what he thinks, a juxtaposition of images that'd even make Alan Moore proud and a use of splitscreen that's not just fitting the context of the story but also, genuinly adds to the piece. Something that, for instance, Aranofsky could learn from (with him it's mostly a means to make rapid cutting even faster. Then there's the liberal use of media and the usual Verhoeven wink at the fascism of society...
    ...an adaptation of the Batman comic 'The Dark Knight Returns' by Verhoeven might result in one of the best comic book movies yet.

    er, but that just might be me.

  • kangarootoo #32 6 years ago

    @MtAtheist

    "I rate Robocop a masterpiece (dont laugh)"

    You won't catch me laughin there. I am totally with you on that. Interesting that at the time of release an awful lot of people dismissed Robocop as Commando in a metal suit, again missing the pointed comment. I guess sometimes people don't see the satire if they are the intended target.

  • Chtulie #33 6 years ago

    To be honest, it took Verhoeven a while to see that about robocop too, at first he did dismiss the script as simply another Cameron-esque orgy of casual violence.
    The full title is great, but maybe a little too good 'Robocop, the future of law enforcement', just like a tacky marketing campaign.

  • ali-uk #34 6 years ago

    I loved both Robocop and Starship Troopers, it's a shame that both games for both films suck ass.

  • PuffyPipe #35 6 years ago

    ali-uk said: "I loved both Robocop and Starship Troopers, it's a shame that both games for both films suck ass".

    Hey! I liked Robocop Vs Terminator on the Megadrive!

  • myrmican #36 6 years ago

    @kangarootoo

    I'm well aware of the limitations of game development. Constantly aware, in fact.

    That said, there are certain quality bars which any developer would also have to be aware of. For example, comparing your title to games from the past few years and making sure you're at least up to their standard.

    Someone at Strangelite implemented and kept the appalling laggy controls the way they are - I find it inconceivable that they didn't get bug reports saying 'the controls suck'. For whatever reason, they chose to ignore those reports, and for that I feel quite confident in castigating whoever made that decision as a shoddy and incompetent developer.

    If it were just one or two things wrong, I might be more charitable. Instead, they've made a pig's breakfast of the whole title. Attempting something new and screwing up a bit - that I can forgive. Screwing up something as basic as the weapons and controls of a licensed FPS is unforgiveable.

  • kangarootoo #37 6 years ago

    "and for that I feel quite confident in castigating whoever made that decision as a shoddy and incompetent developer. "

    Or someone who was in a situation that didn't afford them the time to make anything other than class A fixes (and crap controls are not a class A issue, despite what you or I might suggest).

    You are probably right, but I like to give benefit of the doubt, and in this case there is doubt as you are making some assumptions.

    Anyway, don't want to press the point as your speculation is perfectly valid of course.

  • Teeth #38 6 years ago

    Most developers are shit, that's why most games suck.

  • kangarootoo #39 6 years ago

    I wish that wasn't true :(

  • smelly #40 6 years ago

    Teeth, im sure you could do better.

    There are LOTS of factors as to whether a game sucks or not most of them boil down to money and not talent.

    I know a LOT of talented guys who are developers, who've only ever worked on crap games. It's not their fault if the publisher gives them (For example) 6 months to do a 18 month game. .etc etc etc.

  • VibratingDonkey #41 6 years ago

    The demo was fun! I laughed the entire time I played it. (about 10 seconds) Especially at the fellow in the little armoryroomthingie. And it was probably unintentional humor, which makes it even more funny.

    Oh and, OVERRATED!!!

  • DeadWalker #42 6 years ago

    Hearing all this about the game is guting. I have been waiting a long time for this game. It could have been one of the best licenced games ever with its game theme.

    While its hard to know what has been said and done by the developer and/or the publisher, one unavoidable fact remains. The Publisher went ahead and published this unfinished/buggy game. Publishers have quality control people to test and retest games before releasing the game. Yet this publisher went ahead and published it. So that decision can only have come from the upper management of the publisher to ok the game to go into production for distribution etc...

    I don't know if the developer is a good developer or a bad developer, but its obvious this publisher has sent out an unfinished buggy game. So as the publisher has that attitude, then something is seriously wrong with this publisher.

    The publisher clearly doesn't care about releasing a good or even a finished game, so I wouldn't trust them to give a developer the creative control to produce a good game or even in this case, the time to finish the game the publisher has asked the developer to create. This publisher looks like it just wanted a film licenced game, another meanless boxed game to sit on shop shelves and I've seen enough poor film licenced games over the years. Its corporate development hell, where they spend so long on dreaming about cut sequiences and story telling etc... and so they don't want to spend the time on designing good and fun core gameplay or even finishing the game they have started to create.

    Oh well, I guess I've just saved some money up for another new game! ... Gears of War maybe! ;)

  • Bitkari #43 6 years ago

    In case anyone was wondering what the subtitle alludes to...

    http://www.early-sarah-brightman.com/starshiptrooper.htm

    [apologies in advance :p]

  • Edward_Love #44 6 years ago

    "As the back of the box explains, again demonstrating the game's complete lack of comprehension when it comes to the license, "Hesperus, a planet perilously close to Earth, has fallen to the bug menace." In other words, rather than recreate the film's story, it's the, "Er, it's five years later and something similar is happening," manoeuvre. Twelve missions throw you into the hordes of Bugs, with thinly veiled excuses for you to run from checkpoint to checkpoint armed only with infinite ammo and the slowest quick-load in the west."

    I'm assuming then that the original movie takes place on Earth. Correct?
    Edited by 1 at 30/11/05 @ 10:09