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Avoid at all costs. Do not get started - even a couple hours. You will regret it.

I don't normally write steam reviews, however having played over 14 hours of the game, I feel like I want to take the opportunity to - partly to document my experience in the hopes that the developers will try to fix some aspects of the game, which would make it genuinely very fun and enjoyable, as well as partly to help inform anyone still sitting on the fence for the game.


The Starship Troopers setting is actually done pretty well overall - everything feels quite organic, whether it's the different types of troopers you can command, the buildings and maps, the campaign's narrative and characters - not to mention the bugs themselves! This is nice, because sometimes when working on a game adaptation, studios will try to fit the setting around the game, introducing a load of "stuff" that ends up feeling out of place, but you never really get that here.


The first thing to say about the core game mechanics here is that they're not sophisticated - in fact, they feel extremely casual. That in itself is no bad thing; not everyone is looking for a "Wargame" strategy experience - and even if they are, they're likely to also be open to a more casual experience, which doesn't require large amounts of micro-management and won't heavily punish you for small mistakes.

The problem is that, inexplicably, Terran Command does do those things. The separated "fire and manoeuvre" mechanic that the game puts forward is by all means an interesting and meaningful concept - the issue is that the actual implementation of it really is not, or not consistently enough. To name just a few problems with it:


...a rule which they will obey, ironically, with the same kind of lack of autonomy that you might expect from a bug possessed by a hive mind. Want to send your troops anywhere except the immediate vicinity? Better check which route(s) they take then - because they might not be the same as others!

This happened to me in a mission where I selected a collection of 6 different units at the same time, who were all approximately in the same place - only to find that two of them had gone the *wrong* way around a set of impassable terrain, taking them straight through a bug hive, because the game calculated that was the fastest route for them. Hilariously, when doing so, those units will actually just mindlessly run past or even into the bugs, not stopping to engage them at distance (remember, they're not allowed to run and shoot).

You might argue that is what the "attack" move is for - except you don't expect to have to use attack move when you order your troops to go back to their base. Small oversight's like this one - calculating the routes for the grouped units individually, rather than collectively - combined with the rigid "fire and manoevure" mechanic lead to endless problems and massive frustration, which ultimately just takes any semblance of fun out of the game.


First of all, you have no choice on how units will position themselves with respect to one another - this is decided by the game, based on the units composition that is selected. Normally, it will do this by positioning the troops that are capable of indirect fire behind the ones that are not - i.e grenade launchers located behind the guys with regular rifles, parallel to the line of fire. Ok, pretty sensible. How about perpendicular to the line of fire? Good luck trying to work it out, as I have no clue how the game handles this. Many times, I've had units that were on the right flank, run over to the left and vice versa, when changing the angle of the firing line, resulting in the centre getting blocked and no-one firing - goodbye units.

Oh and about controlling the forward facing direction of your units - the game automatically adjusts this depending on where your mouse is relative to where the troops are now. Want to move a firing line backwards? Congratulations, your troops now have their backs to the enemy, by default, unless you can yank your mouse around to get them to face the right direction! The real cherry on the top is the way the campaign constantly features set pieces where your units will turn a corner in a canyon, or crest the top of the hill, only to have a previously unseen (due to LoS) group of bugs attack them from the side, leaving you unable to either back up effectively or reorient the line - and when I say constantly, I really do mean constantly. The campaign is 20 scenarios, which probably equates to roughly 20 hours - that's not an hour per mission mind you - many of them can be completed in half an hour, or less in fact - however, others can take between an hour to even two hours, simply because you have to go through, triggering all the ambush attacks where your units get slaughtered, only to reload the last checkpoint and cheese it on the next go, because you know it's coming. So the "strategy" is basically cheat to defeat.

Honestly, the worst part about this is that it would be so easy to fix - the Total War games have spent literally decades refining exactly this kind of system, to the point that the perfect answer is already there - but we get this terrible system instead.


Units will only ever engage an enemy if it is within their line of sight, in range and not obstructed by an obstacle. Therefore, if they're attacked by anything with a ranger greater than their own, they will literally just stand there and take the punishment, until they're wiped out. If a unit next them is attacked by an enemy unit out of range, they will also just stand there, doing nothing. If you order a group of units, some of whom have direct view of an enemy, others whose view is obstructed, the latter will just stand there doing nothing, making no attempt to move to a position where they are able to fire.

Units have no ability whatsoever to determine any kind of priority when it comes to choosing which enemy units to attack. Therefore, a Mech will quite happily blast away at Warrior/Tiger bug units which are doing little to no damage to it, completely ignoring the Scorpion bug unit that is able to kill it in 3-4 shots. Rocket troops, that are able to counter the Scorpion bug, will quite happily blast away at the Warrior/Tiger bugs that are too fast for them to hit, whilst the Mech next to them turns into a ball of slag. Basically, any engagement that involves Scorpion bugs means micromanaging your rocket troopers - and if there's more than 4 Scorpion bugs at a time - which happens on a number of occassions - good luck, because you're going to f****** need it.

To be honest, I think I'll stop there, because I honestly don't have the patience to write out all the other problems with the gameplay mechanics. Hopefully, some of the other reviews will capture these.