Originally published at: The Starship Troopers game looks awesome | Boing Boing
…
2 Likes
This sounds … worrying I guess? Unless the game is some sort of unwinnable wave shooter, it sounds like pretty much the opposite of the film. Isn’t a major part of the point of ST that the ground troops are essentially disposable cannon fodder, and are slaughtered in droves?
4 Likes
I thought the movie was well-made but the challenge is that many, many people (especially, but certainly not only, younger folks who may not know history as well) didn’t get the deeper messages of the film and saw the fascist human protagonists as the heroes. I’m not super optimistic that gamers will have a better take on the lessons from this story.
8 Likes
I don’t know about this game but the recent strategy game definitely conveyed “These are Nazis and that is bad”. Don’t know about this one, in fact I have not heard of it before and assumed this post was going to be about the RTS
4 Likes
Hmm, I’ll admit it’s been 40 years since I read it, but that,s not the takeaway I remember. They did take heavy casualties, but I think that was contrasted with just how much training and expense and the expensive suits. This contradicts the idea that they were considered disposable. You don’t invest in cannon fodder.
Until the franchise finds a creative team that can properly capture the essence of the first film, a video game might be the best option for the series.
As I recall, Casper van Dien went all in on trying to make it a franchise. Without Verhoeven’s satire of the underlying fascism of the Heinlein novel, though, there’s nothing particularly interesting about it.
The same might go for the video game. When Avalon Hill did the ST wargame, they were at least able to add some interesting SF elements and mechanics to their standard game architecture. While it’s interesting to see the ST aesthetics in a FPS, is it all that different from Halo?
4 Likes
Movie version. Different facists
7 Likes
I disagree. #2 is reportedly pretty naff, but the third brings the satire back, even a bit more overtly than the first.
2 Likes
This is the Starship Troopers game I played a lot as a kid. The need for keeping track of hidden tunnels with drawing maps could occasionally get tedious on big missions, but overall the gameplay felt accurate to the book, unlike, a certain, ahem…
5 Likes
I had to give up on FPS’s when repetitive strain inuries started to slow me down, so I am not an expert on the current state of the art. But from the trailer, it just looks like Half-Life with the Starship Trooper aliens copy-pasted in. I feel like 2008 me would have been psyched, but 2022 me is less excited.
5 Likes
It’s very hard for others to re-capture Verhoeven’s mix of cutting satire (the kind that exposes those right-wingers who think he’s being pro-fascist) with Hollywood action and suspense. It’s why the re-makes of Robocop and Total Recall, which weren’t straight -to-video releases like the ST sequels, didn’t quite work either.
6 Likes
What is this movie version, I’ve never heard of it, pretty sure it never existed 
2 Likes
#3, ST: Marauder, was written and directed by Ed Neumeier, screenwriter of the first (and Robocop), so the script is in good hands. He’s not the director Verhoeven is, but he gets the job done well enough to thrill and get his ideas/jokes across. The main flaw the film has is a relatively low effects budget.
3 Likes
Haven’t read the book, and it’s at least a decade since I last saw the film, but what sticks in my mind is the fantastic pastiche of the “reportage of heroic acts on the front lines” form of propaganda, with said propaganda in ST inevitably ending with the soldiers in question being bitten in half by a giant alien bug or meeting a similarly grisly death. Do your part! Join up now!
2 Likes
9 Likes
If they make it a lot like Darktide, then it would work just fine. It’s the latest spiritual successor to the Left for Dead style FPS gameplay now and is set is the satirical laden 40K fascist future that’s sillier and you as imperial mercs. That’s about as close as you can get to Starship Troopers in mechanics, you would just have to update the world and enemies and loop to satisfy the experience with the differing sci-if worlds.
Obviously a co-op looter-shooter still wouldn’t be 1 to 1 but without some kind of Edge of Tomorrow or Akumetsu style story it can’t be an FPS and cannon fodder.
If it was entirely up to me, I would look at darkest dungeon for gameplay loop inspirations for the right feel since that game is the best cannon fodder game I can think of—but it’s built around sending teams out on episodic missions and RPG leveling and whatever. But that purposeful feel was also a weakness when a character died that you got fully leveled it sucked because you had to grind them up again, and when you encourage safe and passive choices in dangerous games it saps the fun and thrills of the dangerous game away.
5 Likes
I love the movie but the game doesn’t seem to have much of a hook if i was judge solely off the trailer. If i wanted to play an “alien bug wave shooter with rogue-like elements” i’d play Deep Rock Galactic which is really fun.
4 Likes
That was one of the ways Paul Verhoeven subverted the source material, which was unapologetically pro-fascist. Heinlein would have hated how the military was depicted as cocky, frequently incompetent bastards with little regard for the lives of human grunts, let alone alien civilizations.
7 Likes
Came here to say the same thing. I love the Verhoeven Starship Troopers, but nothing about this game looks particularly special. DRG is fun on a bun. Rock and Stone!
3 Likes
5 Likes
