Considering when the original movie came out in theaters, Starship Troopers should've gotten the "boomer shooter" treatment. However, there aren't that many official Starship Troopers games, and the genres are split between strategy and modern shooter. Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! isn't necessarily a boomer shooter, but it has a few elements that make you think it might be — most notably the fact that it comes from the developer of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun. We took the latest demo for a spin and came away intrigued by how the game is shaping up.

The stylized look of Boltgun has been translated fairly faithfully to the Starship Troopers universe. The environments are fully polygonal, but the textures have a pixelated look that appears sharp yet low resolution in a good way. The characters are fully pixelated and have an old-school shooter look. Only a handful of animation frames are present, and you can only see both enemy and ally characters through predetermined angles. Most of the effects are also pixelated but flatter, so things like fire can only be seen from one angle because it'll rotate based on your viewpoint. It's a neat look, and the best description is that this looks like an evolution of the BUILD engine, which was used in games like the classic Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem 3D, but the resolution has been bumped up. Whatever you do, make sure that the motion blur option is off because it makes mobile allies look worse when they move.

While the Starship Troopers game looks similar to Boltgun, the gameplay is very far from being a modern boomer shooter. All of your guns require reloading. Any turrets you encounter not only have heat output to monitor but also have limited ammo counts. You can only hold a maximum of two guns at a time, and any heavy weapons you pick up mean that it immediately gets dropped when you swap weapons. You can hold a few grenade types, and you can hold on to specific special weapons, like an orbital strike for a one-time use. You can find ammo on the field only through pre-placed ammo caches, and those go dry after two or three uses, but you can call on an ammo drop of your own if you kill enough bugs to fill up the appropriate meter for it. This is a modern shooter through and through, with the only element of classic shooters being the fact that you need to seek out health and armor refills. Health only gets regenerated to the quarter mark.

With the modern game mechanics come a more modern approach to the mission structure. The levels are still linear as far as the environments, but the levels are open in nature, and there are no restrictions about where you can go. What makes this different from other games is the fact that you're presented with all of the missions at once, and you're free to approach any mission in any order you want. The only exception is the level's final mission, which becomes accessible once all of the other objectives have been completed. Even though you still have to complete all objectives, the ability to tackle most of the game however you'd like is a feature that would be great to see in other shooters.

The overall gameplay actually works fine in the demo. The shooting feels right, as only the smallest of bugs can ever be taken down by a melee attack. Both the regular and larger bugs feel like they take coordinated efforts to take down, forcing you to do some old-school backpedaling when things heat up. Ammo scarcity means that you need to be smart about your shots or find a way to be close to an ammo drop, and this is especially true when you discover that the pilotable mechs are very rare. The only part that feels half-baked at this point is your ally's AI. It seems OK in taking out a few bugs, but it also has a tendency to get in your way. It also doesn't follow your commands very well, which makes the mechanic feel underutilized in the demo.

The demo goes through one of the early stages in the full game, and you get a good glimpse of the vibe the team is going for in the game — namely everything in the first film. The mission briefing has the mix of seriousness with some bombast. The cut scene before the mission shows off a commercial for the beach resort you're trying to liberate. The commercial feels low-budget but goes for the semi-serious tone that was seen in the original film's propaganda ads. The dialogue you hear on the battlefield also has everyone gung-ho about fighting bugs and doing everything for the government while talking about "doing their part," even as they die. This is exactly what some fans are looking for, but don't be surprised if the game tries to deviate from that vibe.

So far, the demo for Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! looks like something that fans of single-player first-person shooters should be tracking. The open areas and ability to tackle most quests in any order you want gives the game a fresh feel over most other first-person shooters. The combination of old-school pixels with current technology gives the game a distinct look, and it helps that the shooting feels right. The inclusion of more modern shooter elements might throw off those looking for something purely boomer shooter in nature, but it's still a shooter that involves some thought — even though that isn't normally associated with this license. We can't wait to give this title a longer look, especially when a release date finally gets announced.