Starship Troopers – Developer Interview
Starship Troopers – Developer Interview
Doug Binks, Head of Strangelite Studios
We collared Doug Binks, Head of Strangelite Studios after he’d been having a practise run through of his presentation of their latest game, Starship Troopers.
The game is based on the first film, but takes additional inspiration from the the CGI series, comic books, and the second movie. Yes, there were two films, the second being a ‘straight to video’ release, proving that great ideas can be utterly buggered up… but thankfully that’s not the case with the game as Doug explained.
The game is set five years after the ending of the first film, memorable for its totally over the top gore and the rather tasty Dina Meyer as well as the equally tasty Denise Richards… oh, as well as the ‘something for the ladies’ hunk, Casper Van Dien and Mr Gravel Voice, Michael Ironside. Doug is confident that Strangelite’s version of the Starship Troopers universe will satisfy fans of the film, book, cartoon and comics alike with its faithful recreation of the ST dropships, starships, and weapons and of course, there’s plenty of warrior bugs, brains bugs, tankers and plasma bugs ready for the slaying, as well as a few more created especially for the game.
You play the part of a newly formed elite Mobile Infantry unit, known as a Marauder and as such, you’re the guy who has access to all the cool weapons the MI only wish they had. Your purpose in battle is to complete specific tasks, or spearhead attacks, providing cover and support to MI, or going on ‘lone wolf’ style missions beyond the abilities of your standard MI grunts.
You’ll find yourself up against some fearsome enemies, all lifted direct from the film and transplanted neatly into the game. There’s hundreds of warrior bugs, the big nasties that swarm all over the place right from the beginning of the movie, through to the huge tanker bugs that spit massive gouts of flame. Even bigger than that are the plasma bugs, used to great effect in taking down Fleet starships… and on top of that, Strangelite have created a few of their own, such as the rhino bug with near impenertrable armour on the front but a soft spot behind.
To help you in you missions, you’ll have access to some of the top weapons Fleet can provide. From your basic grunt weapon of combined machine gun and shotgun, you can use battle shotguns, plasma rifles, rocket launchers with multiple lock on ability and even nukes… So if you find a bug hole….nuke it.
But how are Strangelite even hoping to re-create those impressive swarms of hundreds of bugs which we saw in the films? Well, the answer lies in the question.. Strangelite have created something called the Strangelite WAR Machine, known as the SWARM engine (geddit?). With this power behind the game, Strangelite are promising to be able to re-create those scenes with loads of baddies running around all over the place, all intent on ripping your limbs off and sucking your brains out… nice.