Starship Troopers: Terran Ascendancy Review

The enemies are perfectly animated bugs you could have seen in the movie. Before each mission, intelligence officers will introduce bugs suspected to be in the area, and suggest you what weapons to use against each type. Each type of bugs has a specific way of attack and defense, and you'll have to find a proper way to respond to their tactics. The combat looks quite impressive. A seemingly deserted planet will all of a sudden be crammed with hosts of bugs, some of them even ten times as big as your soldiers. They will pour flames and acid at you, and your MI won't play sitting ducks, they'll retreat step-by-step shooting at anything in site.

So much about the upsides of the game. The thing that immediately springs to attention is the mediocre graphics, and poorly scripted sequences. The terrains look quite monotonous even with the multitude of visual effects and dynamic elements (terrain animation and critters). The camera is badly conceived and you'll frequently have to fiddle with it in order to see anything. The interface takes up way too much space so it's best to turn it off as soon as the game starts, and use keyboard shortcuts to do the job. Using different formations was a nice idea, but it seems to be useless and too imprecise in this particular game. The faster soldiers will run in front of the slower ones breaking the formation, and some of them will persistently keep away from the rest of the troop. As your troops move, so does the camera, which makes targeting bugs very difficult. This will surely disappoint newbies from the very beginning, but they will soon realize that it's best to leave targeting to the troopers themselves.

The lack of possibility to save games is completely irrational. The programmers wanted to prolong the time you spend playing the game, but they achieved the opposite. It really feels discouraging when your troops get suddenly slaughtered by a concealed group of bugs right before the end of the mission. Your only option is to replay the scenario, hoping the same thing won't happen again. Only the most persistent players will have enough patience to play a game with such concept.

These days, when people tend to connect anything to the net, the idea of creating a strictly single-player game seems ludicrous. There are some games that could do without the multiplayer mode (though I have seen a multiplayer Tetris), but RTSs simply cannot. The lack of possibility to save games reduces replay value, but the fact that you won't be able to play Starship Troopers against a live opponent, sentences the game to oblivion. Some future patch might correct this flaw, but until then, we can only imagine what it would be like to lead the bugs against neighbor's MI troops.

Sound is defiantly one of the upsides of the game. The weapons sound realistic and the music improves the atmosphere and follows the action on the field. AI is also pretty good. As I already stated, the soldiers act rationally, which is more than could be said for the bugs (but as they are not supposed to have brains anyway, you cannot call this a flaw).

If you're one of the big Starship Troopers' fans, this game will justify the name and give you feeling you really participate in your favorite war. The rest of the strategy fans may find a lot of interesting features, but only if they are patient and persistent enough to suffer the huge number of technical flaws that may or may not be fixed in the future. As for the rest of you, this game surely won't be nominated for the game of the year. Save your money for something more sensible.