Starship Troopers - Terran Ascendancy: is a squad based, action game set in the 23rd century. Like the movie, the game is about the experiences of the men and women of the Mobile Infantry. The player assumes the role of a Lieutenant in the Mobile Infantry and given charge of a platoon at the start of the 3rd Terran Space war. This war is between humanity and the giant arachnids of Klendathu. Also like the movie, this game overall is not much short of brilliant.
Starship Troopers - Terran Ascendancy: is a squad based, action game set in the 23rd century. Like the movie, the game is about the experiences of the men and women of the Mobile Infantry. The player assumes the role of a Lieutenant in the Mobile Infantry and given charge of a platoon at the start of the 3rd Terran Space war. This war is between humanity and the giant arachnids of Klendathu. Also like the movie, this game overall is not much short of brilliant.
The control method for the game is fairly straight forward - you can drag a box to select the units and then click on an area to move them there. The keyboard shortcuts for squad selection is pretty
much the same standard way as in most games of this genre - pressing the number keys one, two or three selects either of the three squads. These keys can be reassigned by selecting the troops you want by dragging a box around them and pressing Alt+ (a number key). There are a number of troop formations that are available and these can be changed using the function keys. Orders to your troops can be issued either using the command panel to the left side of the screen or through keyboard shortcut keys.
The biggest problem I found with the game was in selecting specific targets. After the first mission, I just totally gave up on targeting specific bugs. What I chose to do instead was slowly move my troops forwards towards the bugs until they were within firing range or the bugs charged at my troops and let the MI troops open fire on their own accord.
The inability to save during missions can be a bit irritating especially with the "requirements" for the missions i.e. some missions have requirements that you should have at least one of a particular weapon, but if your trooper who carriers this weapon gets killed, that's it - you have to restart the level. This is especially irritating when you are close to the end of a level!
The camera works really well in the game allowing you to pan in all directions and zoom in and out, but as with most, it does become a bit fiddly when trying to view all of your troops within a confined space like a valley with high sides for instance. The graphics are really quite good and still look good in lower resolution modes like 800x600.
In the lower right of the mission screen there is a visual representation of your troops. Their portraits become highlighted when selected - however, this highlighting is not the best. On many an occasion, I thought that I had selected only my medic to get him to heal my troops only to find that the whole squad was still selected. The trooper’s portraits can also be changed to display which weapon they are using.
The game also offers the user the ability to call in air strikes, but be careful as you can end up taking out your whole squad if you accidentally walk into the strike zone.
So, to sum up - Starship Troopers - Terran Ascendancy in my opinion is a brilliant game albeit for a few problems. I would certainly recommend this game to others.
