Splat some Bugs in Starship Troopers: Terran Command (PC)
Last night while I was
idly browsing Steam’s upcoming releases list, I got my first look
at Slitherine’s Starship Troopers: Terran Command. It’s a
real time strategy game that’s based on the first film in the
series, letting the player take control of the Mobile Infantry as
they battle against the Bugs. The game is being developed by Belgian
developer The Aristocrats and has been in development for more than
two years. It’s scheduled for release sometime in 2020, and sadly,
after the game’s announcement last December, everything seems to
have fallen silent. With the Corona Virus currently affecting pretty
much everything, who’s to say if it will even release this year.
Time will tell.
I really liked the
first Starship Troopers film. The others, well, I barely
remember them, but the first was a fun, gory, satirical look at how a
space-age military might deal with an alien menace. If Starship
Troopers: Terran Command manages to capture enough of the feel of
the first film, and doesn’t make a mess of anything major, it could
be the real time strategy game that actually draws me back to the
genre after years of largely not being interested.
Iain McNeil, Development Director
at Slitherine sums up the seemingly perfect fit of Starship Troopers
as an RTS in the press release when he said: “If you take one of
the most iconic movies from the 90s and shape it into a strategy game
of survival, that mixes classic real-time mechanics, tower defense
and tactical deployment of units then you have ‘Starship Troopers -
Terran Command’ in a nutshell”.
The thing that has me
the most excited comes in the description of campaign side of
the game. The Steam description reads: “Remain
obedient to the demands of Terran Command – no matter how costly or
ruthless – to benefit from exclusive unit types and special
abilities, or follow your own path to glory to become an irrefutable
Hero of the Federation.” Now this might be a strange
thing to get excited about, but the idea of being given a ridiculous
order and having to decide if the sacrifice is worth it... that
sounds fun to me.
If you think Starship
Troopers: Terran Command sounds like it could be your kind of
thing, head over to Steam and pop it on your wishlist. I’ve
embedded the announcement trailer below if you want to see how things
might look. To me, it looks a bit ropey in places, but then it’s an
early glimpse of things to come, and this is to be expected. It does
look fun though!
