Video Game / Starship Troopers

Marauder, welcome to the first day of the rest of your war.

"Hey, Marauder!"

— All of the AI "grunts"

Starship Troopers is a 2005 video game based on Paul Verhoeven's (not-so) adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's novel.

Five years after the movie, the Arachnids have taken over the planet of Hesperus, and it's up to the player, Marauder 06, to help the Mobile Infantry retake the planet. Along the way players will fight against many castes of Arachnids, from both the movie and the TV series.

Like Deus Ex: Invisible War, this is one of those games that gets picky about its hardware; it is designed to run on Windows XP and Windows XP only, though this can be solved using compatiblity mode. And then there's the video card compatibility issue. With some tweaks, this can be solved too, though this results with very, very severe Special Effect Failure in-game.

Not to be confused with Starship Troopers Terran Ascendancy. Or with Starship Troopers Extermination, a 2023 First-Person Shooter which is highly evocative of this 2005 game, albeit with more of a large-scale multiplayer focus.

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This game provides examples of:

• Ace Pilot: The Marauder pilot. According to Harris, she Drives Like Crazy.
• And the Adventure Continues: The game ends in typical Starship Troopers fashion; a Fednet propaganda reminding the player that the war is far from over. Like the rest of the game's FMVs, it consists of Stock Footage and is pretty much a redub of the first film's ending.
• Anyone Can Die: Like in the movie and the marines from the AvP games, expect your fellow MI troops to die very quickly. This however, is subverted in a few levels; a few troopers actually survive, but still, they don't help a lot.
• Attack Its Weak Point: The large bugs, such as Tankers, Plasmas, Royal Warriors, etc. This is the only way to kill said bugs. Even worse, the only way to hit said weak points are using Morita rifles or railguns. You can however, nuke them out of their misery (except the Royals or the X-Bug).
• Awesome, but Impractical: The railgun, the missile launcher, and the nuke launcher can kill most Arachnids in one shot, but their rate of fire is slow, and ammo for them is quiet rare. Also, the Morita carbine's secondary fire mode is useful at wiping out groups of Arachnids, and can even bring down a Royal with several shots, but eat up lots and lots of ammo, which is shared with other Morita variants.
• Ax-Crazy: Whenever a grunt freaks out, he'll instantly become this.
  I WILL TAKE ALL OF YOU! ALL OF YOU!!!! ALL OF YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Big Damn Heroes/One-Man Army: The player.
• Boring, but Practical: Aiming down the Morita sniper's sights decreases its rate of fire, but makes it more powerful. It can bring down a baby plasma/tanker bug with 25-30 shots.
• Bottomless Magazines: The Morita Mk 4, which has infinite ammo but can overheat if fired for too long.
  Commander Harris: ...so fire in short controlled bursts!
• Blinded by the Light: The Sentinel Bugs. Oh, and they're calling reinforcements at the same time.
• The Cameo: Casper Van Dien reprises his role as Johnny Rico (now a general) in a few levels. He berates the player if he fails a mission too. And he chewed the scenery piece by piece.
• Canon Discontinuity: The plot for Starship Troopers 3 has retconned this game to hell.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: The player, for most of the campaign.
• Climax Boss: Played straight with the Royal Warriors and the X-Bug.
• Continuity Nod: A lot of the levels will remind you of the movies' scenes.
• Death from Above
• Driven to Madness: See Sanity Slippage.
• Drop Ship: As in the movie, again.
• The Engineer: The Mech-Troopers. Each mission has at least one of them. In some of their appearances you have to protect them. The game's coop mode involves the players protecting him while recovering parts needed to repair the evac dropship.
• Elites Are More Glamorous/Elite Army: The Marauders.
• Escort Mission: The player escorts Psi-Ops General Hauser in two missions. Oh, and sometimes a Mech-Trooper.
• Final Boss: The X-Bug.
• Freak Out: See Ax-Crazy.
• Friendly Fire Proof: Not even nukes can kill the player's allies, unless it's a scripted event. In this case, the trooper whose legs got ripped off and blew himself up in the Bug Hive.
• Gender Is No Object: Zig-zagged. Although female pilots do appear in scripted cutscenes, not to mention female troopers in the FMV cutscenes, all of the MI troops in-game are males.
• General Ripper: Very narrowly subverted with Hauser.
• Gorn
• Heal Thyself: Pretty much the only reason why The Medic in this game doesn't heal you.
• Heavily Armored Mook: The Tiger Bugs. They're a stronger variant of the Warrior. It has its own variants as well, the Spit and the Shard.
• Heroic Mime/The Voiceless: The player, as usual.
• Hold the Line: The entirety of Outpost 29 and Stronghold, not to mention certain parts in Compound, Two Bridges, and Offensive.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: A lot of already deceased troopers encountered throughout the game are impaled by (also already) dead bugs. Also happens in a few scripted sequences.
• Jerkass: Hauser.
• Kill It with Fire: The Tankers and the Fireflies (no, not that one).
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Played straight, unlike in the movie.
• Large Ham: Many characters, but Hauser takes the cake, especially in Bait.
  NO! MORE! MUST, HAVE, MORE, BUGS! BUGS! MORE! BRING MORE!!!
  Mind... So PURE!!! MORE! MUST, BRING, MORE!!!
• Ludicrous Gibs: For the Arachnids.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The missile launcher, which can rapid-fire.
• Marathon Boss: Every. Single. Boss.
• Meaningful Name: The X-Bug.
• Mission Control/Voice with an Internet Connection: Harris.
• The Medic: And one that doesn't heal you. See also Heal Thyself.
• More Dakka: The Game. Of the 9 weapons available, 7 were rapid fire.
• No Campaign for the Wicked: An exaggerated example. You CANNOT play as the bugs in multiplayer mode as well.
• Nuke 'em/One-Hit Kill: The nuke launcher from the movie made an appearance, but rare ammo and ever bigger and harder battles meant it was often Too Awesome to Use. In Bait, the player is ordered to fire a non-portable version to wipe out a plasma battery. Its EMP blast ends up shutting down the base.
• Powered Armor: The Maurauder suit that distinguishes you from the disposable cannon fodder grunts. It has regenerating armor and increases your movement speed, but doesn't make you a walking tank like most other adaptation incarnations of Starship Troopers power armor.
• Praetorian Guard: The Royal Warriors, which were the generals of the Bug armies and the Brain Bug's guardians.
• Psychic Powers: Hauser is able to sense bugs that are approaching both him and the player in Plasma Mountain and Psi-Ops. What he doesn't tell you is where they're coming from.
• Putting on the Reich: Hauser's uniform.
• Regenerating Shield, Static Health: Played straight. Your armor regenerates over time, but you still need medikits to restore your health.
• Sanity Slippage: Hauser in Bait, as well as the legless trooper in the Bug Hive, though Hauser regains his sanity at the end of Bait.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Painfully played straight. Both the Morita's underslung shotgun and the heavy shotgun has piss-poor accuracy. The heavy shotgun's secondary fire mode is even less accurate, but can kill a Warrior or a Tiger in one shot.
• Shout-Out: One to Aliens; Harris quotes the movie in the game's tutorial (see Bottomless Magazines).
• Stock Footage: Footage from the first and second films are used in the FMV cutscenes preceding the levels, which in turn led to the majority of the game locations looking identical to film locations, despite being allegedly different places.
• The Un Fought: The Brain bug. Justified; both Harris and Hauser wants it alive.
• Too Awesome to Use: The nuke launcher and the railgun.
• Too Dumb to Live: A lot of the troopers. Subverted in that you can save them, except in scripted sequences.
• Turned Against Their Masters: The X-Bug.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: General Hauser, again. Some grunts qualify as well.
• You All Look Familiar: A lot of grunts share the same face texture. In case of the sergeants/lieutenants/captains, the medics, and the mech-troopers, ALL OF THEM.
• You Are in Command Now: Sometimes Harris will have the player in charge of an MI squad or force.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: A rare heroic example; the player is tasked with fighting and eliminating the X-Bug after the Brain bug is found.
• We Have Reserves: How Psi-Ops treats the MI. Also said word-for-word by Harris, quoting Rico in the first movie:
  Fleet does the flying, while MI does the dying.
• Zerg Rush: The bugs' favorite tactic, as in the movie. The humans rarely do this too, though this time they survive thanks to the player.

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