Bugs Sir, Millions of Them!
Last updated: 13/10/2006 - 10:18
The game of the cartoon of the film of the book. Praise the State and pass the ammunition!
Starship Troopers
Billed as the ultimate PC first-person shooter by creator’s Empire Interactive the videogame version of Starship Troopers is a ground-breaking, epic bug-blasting shooter that has a good shot at capturing the chaos, action and pure adrenaline rush of one of the definitive modern sci-fi blockbusters.
Can you hold your nerve, as hundreds of oversized, killer chitin-armoured bugs come scurrying over the horizon? In the blink of an eye your compound is surrounded, your ears ringing with machine gun fire and the screams of a comrade impaled on arachnid's huge steel mandibles. Every second of the way you’re threatened with being overrun by a teeming mass of killer insects as the thin line of troopers holds out (or doesn’t!) on a hostile alien ‘bug’ world light years from home...
Battlefield
Starship Troopers the game is the first opportunity to fully experience and expand on the events and storylines developed in Paul Verhoeven's classic adaptation. This PC first-person shooter (FPS) boasts a whole host of exclusive features including voice-over commentary by Casper van Dien (the actor who portrayed central protagonist Johnny Rico in the first movie version of Robert Heinleins’ novel) with numerous and varied combat environments - indoor and outdoor levels, wide-open battlefields, a secret laboratory, claustrophobic bug nests, abandoned mines and lonely outposts.
As if swarms of chitinous warrior bugs weren’t nerve-jangling enough, the player must face down giant creatures – including the 15 metre high ‘Tanker Bug’ – that can only be stopped in its tracks by the application of a tac-nuke!
As an 'Elite Marauder' you are our only hope. As the General said: "It's time to earn your citizenship, trooper!"
A true PC epic Starship Troopers aims to be as cinematic, as all-out-action, adrenaline-pumping as possible. A must-buy title for fans of the Starship Troopers universe and guaranteed to be top of the Christmas lists for PC Gamers and sci-fi fans alike. The FPS genre may have just moved up to the next level. Heed your General's battle cry as you run into another swarm of bugs: "Come on you apes, you wanna live forever?"
Robert Heinlein
As with the film, the game rather side-steps Heinlein’s original premise that the troopers would go into battle in armoured exo-skeletons (making them, as his irony intended, resemble much more closely the creatures they fought).
Though the film incorporated many elements (albeit watered down) of the novels’ fascist super state – a xenophobic war machine that makes battle against everything unalike itself – with the ‘bug’ aliens clear representatives of the most ‘unalike’ life form around – it does provide a neat backdrop for a shoot-em-up. Also like the film, the game makes the bugs much more animal like than anything else – save for the ‘brain’ creatures seen on screen and here, they are more ‘swarm’ than ‘individual’ – with power given them by their legion numbers, and by their predatory nature and size.
Heinlein wrote the bugs as an advanced culture, possessed of weapons, technology, art, languages and learning – making his human fascist superpower more akin to historical imperialists, crushing indigenous peoples under their ‘modern’ might. The war in Starship Troopers (the novel) therefore became much more than black and white. The author’s somewhat muddy humanitarian message – that giant arachnid creatures from the depths of space can be ‘people’ too – even while their extermination seems inevitable by a crusading, expansionist humanity – got rather lost in Verhoeven's feature film.
Ultra-Modern Firepower
More inspired by the mentality to be found in 1950’s ‘B’ movies than anything else, this really is just ‘Earth Versus The Bug Men From Space’ writ large as a post-Vietnam war epic. Still, if FPS action, mixed with ultra-modern firepower is what you’re after, then this will probably be your game of the year. Just don’t expect there to be any problem solving needed…
Starship Troopers the PC game introduces a terrifying assortment of enemy bugs for you to destroy, with an impressive range of weapons at your disposal, from the classic 'M2 Morita Rifle' through to the infamous nuke launcher. Over 300 of your arachnid foe's can be tackled on screen at any given time. This has to be played to be believed! Become totally immersed in immense bug-blasting battles in both famous action-packed scenes from the movie and never-before-experienced settings and stories from the Starship Troopers universe.
In addition to all the gadgets, there’s a bespoke score too – as seems to be increasingly the fashion these days. Composer Richard Jacques has created the symphonic backdrop to all this carnage. In 2003, Richard Jacques' music for Headhunter and Headhunter: Redemption was played to a sold-out Gewandhaus concert hall during the first game music symphony outside of Japan.
Ben Wilkins, producer for Empire Interactive, said; "Richard Jacques was the natural choice for Starship Troopers. His 10 years industry experience and past credits, especially in creating cinematic scores, made it abundantly clear that he was the right man for the job. Jacques is currently working on new cinematic productions with movie sound designer Dom Gibbs (Die Another Day, The World Is Not Enough, and Tomorrow Never Dies) and other videogame scoring projects still to be announced. For further information visit his own personal website: www.richardjacques.com.
Game Features
Recommended: 3.0ghz CPU, 1Gb RAM, GeForce 6800 or Radeon X800 [1024x768 with shadows], DirectX 9.0c, 600mb free hard drive space, Windows XP ONLY, DirectX compatible PCI soundcard.
Minimum: 2.0ghz CPU, 512mb RAM, GeForce FX5900 or Radeon 9800 [800x600 with shadows], DirectX 9.0c, 600mb free hard drive space, Windows XP ONLY.
Ian Higgins, CEO of Empire, said: "Starship Troopers is a film licence that lends itself perfectly to the video game genre. We believe it will have global appeal and, combined with our award-winning development team, we will deliver a franchise that will allow gamers the chance to play their favourite scenes from the blockbuster movie."
A high-adrenalin shooter reminiscent of an insane take on ‘Zulu’ in space that sets out to produce – and largely achieves – a gore-splattered analogue of the feature film that spawned it. Don’t expect the game to dip any further back into Heinlein’s source material than the film did though – otherwise you’ll be disappointed – this is straight up ultra-carnage/man against the bugs stuff. Just remember - keep those fingers pumping – and don’t let them take you alive...
Starship Troopers is released on PC-CD ROM only, 24 October, from Empire Interactive. The game has been rated 16+.All images are TM & © 2004 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved.