Bugs, bugs, bugs... - Bob Dylan?

The film Starship Troopers, lost most of the message of the original Robert A. Heinlein story as did the animated series. So could the story be taken and turned into a successful mobile game? Ojom and Elocom thought so and created Roughnecks: Starship Troopers. The game recently won 2007 Best Mobile Action Game from the German Developer Awards. But does the game truly entertain?

The game is adapted from the CGI animated series which ran 36 episodes. It has an underground following but basically dropped the politics that Robert Heinlein put in the original story. Personally, I never thought it was worth watching.

Roughnecks: Starship Troopers places you in the armor of John Rico and has you completing various missions, all of which center on killing as many 'bugs' as you can. Commander J Rasczak gives you commands from afar, basically instructing you on the objectives of each mission. He also gives you helpful hints like "picking up medi packs replenishes your health," so troopers are dumb and need a lot of hand-holding, which Casper Van Dien proved in the film.

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The graphics in Roughnecks: Starship Troopers are good, as with most games coming out on mobiles. The various bugs are well made. While the environment doesn't stray much from the desert-like, parched canyon landscape, which represents the planet Klendathu, they did a good job of putting in some texture variations. There are also some random environmental elements to add flavor to the landscape. The most interesting facet of the graphics are the shadows of clouds that drift by, which I personally thought was cool.

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The sound is dull. There is one song that plays through the whole game, title screens, combat, everything. BO-RING! There are no combat sounds whatsoever. The only other sound in the game is a double beep for incoming messages. Wow talk about skipping an entire piece of the puzzle there. Lately I have noticed that many mobile games don't even go this far with sound. They will have a menu and main screen theme music and then simply forget about sound altogether in the game. I am not sure if this is to save on file size or processing but either way it makes for a dull game if you are looking for sound. I am half tempted to try and use the mp3 player or FM radio function while gaming to get some decent sound.

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The gameplay felt clunky at first. You can either move or shoot but not do both at the same time. If you are in movement mode you must then push 5 to go into shooting mode. This was a little strange at first considering we live in a two-control world where we are used to moving and shooting at the same time. But this is the mobile world and controls are limited to the keypad of the phone and sometimes a thumb stick. I personally use the thumb stick to move and the keypad to do everything else, including shoot because it's more accurate. So after I got over the awkwardness I felt while adapting to the control scheme I thought the game was entertaining. I don't know if it's the best mobile action game I've played but it's definitely engaging. I did feel compelled to continue playing and try to beat the 'bugs' but I was easily frustrated by the controls and would often stop playing.

There is a variety of enemies, warrior bugs, tank bugs, flying bugs, etc and a variety of weapons, assault rifle, flame thrower, time bomb, drop ship bomber (see image at right and above left). These add to the depth of the game and the gameplay.

Overall, this is a game that looks good, sounds bad and plays decently. Should you buy it? Maybe. As I said the control scheme takes some time to become comfortable with and it's almost like a cross between a third-person shooter and a real-time strategy game. You must conserve your ammo, plan your moves and generally have an eye on the big picture. But I found myself losing interest easily and putting the game down, even in the middle of a level, and coming back to it later. So at least take a look at the game, you might enjoy it and find it totally engrossing, or you might be totally put off by it, either way, it's worth a test.

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