You might think you’re familiar with Starship Troopers: Extermination because you’ve played Helldivers 2. They’re both satirical games where you take up arms as an indoctrinated foot soldier in a fascistic army and fight endless hordes of terrifying bugs, but Extermination has a well-implemented base-building twist and charming PS3 vibes that set it apart and ensure it stands on its own two legs.
This is a game best played with friends due to the highly cooperative nature of the multiplayer. Missions include capturing points on your way to defending a key objective, and building up a base to survive an onslaught of vicious bugs that gain buffs as the waves roll in. They’re both absolutely thrilling and tough as nails — get used to failing.
Fortunately, failing is all part of the fun. Each battle will award you with XP to upgrade your six classes. The progression is reminiscent of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. As for classes, there’s the medic, standard grunt, sniper, and an engineer that taps into the game’s base-building mechanic.
At certain points in the missions you’ll be able to whip out a building tool and construct a base just like the ones seen in the film. You construct walls with towers to grant vantage points, automatic sentry turrets, and manned guns. They’re essential to defeating some of the more powerful bugs, like ones that send burning liquid careening through the sky and flooding your encampment like napalm. The bodies of the bugs even pile up and change the terrain, forcing you to clamber over them or find a way around.
The missions are still fun alone as everyone is working toward the same goal, but you’ll have a better time in a squad with your mates. There’s also a single-player campaign that feels a lot like Deep Rock Galactic, but this is mostly only good for levelling up your classes.
The whole aesthetic of the missions and the menus is retro PS3 at its best, but unfortunately the game’s performance tanks when too many bugs are on screen, which is most of the time. Still, clambering over their corpses as the bodies pile up and making a final dash toward the extraction is a blast, and if you’re a fan of Helldivers, this is a solid evolution of the genre and well worth your time.