Starship Troopers: Extermination is the Helldivers 2 alternative we need right now

This story is part of our Summer Gaming Marathon series.

Starship Troopers: Extermination might have entered early access prior to the launch of Helldivers 2, but its 1.0 release this October will now have to follow up Arrowhead Game Studios’ popular shooter. That’s both a blessing and a curse. Starship Troopers: Extermination will no doubt be compared to the exhilarating Helldivers 2 — I’m doing so right now — despite the fact that it’s quite different as a 16-player cooperative first-person shooter with base-building elements. On the bright side, developer Offworld also has the chance to learn from and be better than Helldivers 2 in other ways.

By adopting elements of Helldivers 2′s metagame and offering up a single-player experience, Starship Troopers: Extermination could be poised for success. Considering that some players are mad at Arrowhead Game Studios and Helldivers 2 right now, this is a good time for an officially licensed Starship Troopers game to swoop in and attract some of Helldivers’ audience.

A single-player experience

The primary draw of Starship Troopers: Extermination is its cooperative mode, in which players fight bugs as a solider in the Deep Space Vanguard. Extermination has some distinct flair on paper: matches that support up to 16 players, bugs remain on the ground after they are killed, and underlying character class and base-building systems underneath. To ease players into the game’s complexities, Offworld is creating a single-player experience called Special Operations Group, or S.O.G.

It will only have 25 missions at release, but it stars Casper Van Dien as Johnny Rico from the films, and Offworld plans on adding more content post-launch. At a hands-off preview event, project lead Peter Maurice explained that these levels were designed to teach players the basics of the game, but aren’t packed to the brim with obvious signposts. He says that honing down Starship Troopers: Extermination into a single-player experience allowed them to