Starship Troopers (video game)
Starship Troopers is a First Person Shooter developed by Strangelite Studios and published by Empire Interactive based upon the film of the same name by Paul Verhoeven. Set five years after the events of the film, players assume the role of 'Marauder Zero Six' as they assault the planet Hesperus which has been invaded by the Arachnids. The game is built with Strangelite's 'SWARM' engine of which not much is known about other than it is DirectX 9 capable. The game features footage from both Starship Troopers films for pre mission briefings and has small, cameo voice over from Casper Van Dien in the beginning.
Singleplayer
Singleplayer in Starship Troopers consists of two modes: a timed one and the Campaign mode. In the campaign mode, you play as the lead character Masauder, one of the highest ranked soldiers in the Mobile Infatry. Your objective is to stave off the invasion of the bugs in various locales drawn from the original movie. The campaign features a fairly lengthy story and a myriad of alien swarms to destroy.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer in Starship Troopers consists of three different modes; Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Co-op. The most popular mode is Co-op which sees players defending a mechanic from onslaughts of arachnids whilst retrieving parts to repair a dropship to escape in. Promised dedicated server binaries and mod tools were never released and along with the closing of the official English forums player numbers have fallen. Another problem is that the game lacks any administrative commands which makes it impossible to kick a misbehaving player for example. Lastly as the balancing of the weapons favours co-op play this means that deathmatch play isn't very competitive. A player who picks up the rocket launcher is likely to dominate for example.
Patches released for the game mainly focused upon improving bringing the game's multiplayer mode. The latest, version 5.24 released in December 2005, introduced 4 new DM/TDM maps and 3 new co-op maps. The network and lobby functions of Starship Troopers are provided by DemonWare.
Easter Eggs
When attempting to throw a grenade (which usually appears with a face and, in English, begins a countdown) sometimes it will appear as usual, but begin a countdown that sounds like German but has no logical numerical pattern.
On mission 3 if the player walks into the storage area to the left at the back of the outpost, the player can see and hear a Trooper grieving over the situation, stating he wants to return to Earth, does not want to be a citizen and does not want to die.
Critical Reaction
The game was shunned by most critics, receiving a score of 3.8 (out of 10) on GameSpot and a 5 (out of 10) from IGN, with both sites stating technical issues, problems with the AI and archaic graphics the reason for the low score.
Minimum System Requirements
As read from the box :
- Windows XP or Windows 2000 Service Pack 4.
- 2.0 GHz processor.
- 4 GB of free hard disk space.
- 512 MB RAM.
- DVD-ROM drive 8x.
- 128 MB videocard with hardware Vertex & Pixel shaders.
- DirectX 9.0c compatible soundcard.
- 512 kbit/s or greater internet for online play or TCP/IP network for LAN play (2 to 32 players).
It can be noted that the minimum requirements is slightly high. Note that some computers that even surpass the minimum requirements may sometimes not run the game.
Recommended System Requirements
- Windows XP or Windows 2000 Service Pack 4.
- 3.0 GHz processor.
- 4 GB of free hard disk space.
- 1GB MB RAM.
- DVD-ROM drive x16.
- 256 MB videocard with hardware Vertex & Pixel shaders(Pixel & Vertex Shader 3.0 Recommended).
- DirectX 9.0c compatible soundcard.
- 512 kbit/s or greater internet for online play or TCP/IP network for LAN play (2 to 32 players).
Meeting or exceeding these requirements, you should be able to enjoy the game with all graphics settings at high, except for "Model Shadows" and occasionally "Background Shadows". However, if you wish to enjoy the game at its full potentiall, the following system requirements should be met.
Ideal System Requirements
- Windows XP or Windows 2000 Service Pack 4.
- 3.2 GHz processor(Intel Pentium D or Extreme model Processors).
- 4 GB of free hard disk space.
- 1.5GB DDR2 533Mhz RAM.
- DVD-ROM drive 16x.
- 512 MB videocard - ATI Radeon X1800 or Nvidia GeForce 7600GTS highly recommended.
- DirectX 9.0c compatible soundcard.
- 512 kbit/s or greater internet for online play or TCP/IP network for LAN play (2 to 32 players).
These hardware requirements are very high end according to Q2 2006, and by Theoreticle benchmarks, the following hardware should run this game on an average of 72fps (Lowest - 49, Highest - 90).