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If there’s one thing with more staying power than Starship Troopers, it’s the persistent corpses that litter the battlefields of Extermination. While many shooters have the object permanence of a toddler, with dead enemies disappearing the instant you look away, STE takes the opposite approach. Post-Carnage, you and fifteen of your battle-addled brethren can stand triumphant atop a battlement carved from the insects you’ve slain. It doesn’t get much more metal than that. Yet the big plans don’t end there for Starship Troopers: Extermination.
Single-Player and Eternal Corpses in STE
Starting with a killer multiplayer FPS and working your way backward to a solid single-player campaign takes a ton of work, but Offworld did just that. Casper Van Dien fans rejoice, because General Johnny Rico is back for the new single-player campaign. As the dispatcher behind the Special Operations Group, General Rico will be the one directing your top-secret assignments. Designed to teach you the ropes before tossing you into 16-person multiplayer missions, single-player looks like the perfect starting point or reintroduction to the game. Offworld plans on adding more missions post-launch, as well.
The Carnage system offers something that even some of the year’s best games lack: a true, persistent battlefield. Every slain Arachnid is another gruesome brick in your walls of your base, another shield against the swarm. Knowing every dead bug is potential cover against a violent spew of acid transforms how you look at the battlefield. Carnage offers Starship Troopers: Extermination incredible potential for emergent tactics and reactive battlefields, and we’re only just starting to see where Offworld might take it.
Starship Trooper Extermination Gets Tanky
Turning your impressive arsenal against alien insects satisfies the brain’s “Boom, Squish” reflex or at least that’s how I justify my many hours in games like this. Not even the coolest guns will hook players longterm without fun baddies to shoot and fun maps to shoot them in, however. Starship Troopers: Extermination is adding more of both, with a brand new world and enemies. Meet the Tanker bug. This chunky enemy variant pops up randomly during matches, breathing fire, stomping around, and generally scuffing things for humanity.
The frozen world of Boreas offers a chilly reception for veterans and newcomers alike. Infected by a bug meteor (beautiful phrase, that), Boreas is set to debut alongside the console launch. There, players will encounter new Frost Drone and Frost Warrior enemy variants, sure to put ice cubes in the blood of any UCF soldier. You can join the bug-blasting excitement when Starship Troopers: Extermination launches out of early access this October 11th on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
