Infested Planet

It was the Starship Troopers-like visual stylings that pulled us in, but it was the nicely balanced tug-of-war between real-time strategy and tower defence that kept us playing beyond the first hour. Infested Planet is a delightfully simple game at its core, but there's subtlety and depth to its systems, and a ramping challenge that'll keep you coming back for more.

It's not just the premise that reeks of Starship Troopers, but the plot has echoes of Paul Verhoeven's movie also. There's a vaguely fascist undercurrent to the narrative, and a similar approach to bugs and bullets. More than once we thought back to scenes in the film (the first one that is, we gave up on the the sequels after mere minutes) where marines hose down rampaging waves of arachnid soldiers. And so it is here.

Breaking that wave of alien bugs is what it's all about at the end of the day. You're assigned a small squad of soldiers and you're instructed to fend off a seemingly never ending supply of enemy targets. Infested Planet is relentless pressure, it's turning the tide, it's holding off until you've got that all important foothold, then it's about mercilessly destroying your enemy.

Levels are measured in bullets fired (among other things), but that fact gives a clear indication of what you need to do, and the scale of the action. You troops are automated and fire of their own volition. You send them to waypoints and once they get there they open up and spray the bullets on their advancing enemies. Aliens that get too close get swiped, but once enough have swarmed a position, death is inevitable.

Your soldiers must, for the most part, capture bases. Doing so grants action points that can be spent on upgrading your soldiers, bringing in air support, or dropping turrets in strategic positions so you can focus your more mobile soldiers in other areas. There's more options and variations as you go forward, such as shotgun troops and snipers, and changing objectives such as escort missions and wave-based levels whereby the balance of power switches repeatedly between attack and defence.

The soldiers under your command die. A lot. But they respawn/refresh from captured bases, ready to head once more into the breach. Air support can be called in to weaken a position before the ground forces go in, and you can upgrade your troops, or soften up enemy turrets or bases with the limited supply of rockets that all soldiers carry. However, at the end of the day, there's bloody thousands of insect-like aliens to shoot, and their tenacity and aggressively relentless AI means your going to lose some troops in the line of fire.

Through all the losses, the setbacks, and the constant low-level stress of constantly being under assault, you have to wrestle control of certain strategic points, funneling enemy forces into deadly bottlenecks and destroying their organic infrastructure. It all hinges on you building up a head of steam, growing more confident as you fend off waves and waves, until eventually you have the strength to comfortably mount a fight back. At this point you're hit with the payoff, the satisfaction of rolling over your opponent, of watching them capitulate under the force of your relentless war machine.

There's a genuine difficulty level here that'll appeal to tacticians, but it's also accessible enough that it wouldn't take long for people to get the measure of the systems. There's enough skills and power ups to keep the experience interesting and engaging, but not so many that it'd be a barrier for entry for non-RTS players. It scratches a very particular itch, and could be described almost as an inverse tower defence (if you wanted to further categorise it, that is). The levels can be long, perhaps too long at times, and the one-note visual theme can start to border on repetitive after a while.

There's plenty of content, with a story campaign complimented by side missions, and weekly challenges for additional alien swatting. The difficulty quickly increases as you progress, and some of the missions require what felt like a longterm investment, such is the size of the alien army you're facing. Your enemies get more powerful as you progress, with potent turrets, mines and more nasty surprises designed to hinder your progress. It's also tricky to keep up with what's going on at times, as enemies come at you from all angles of the cavernous maps. Keeping track of what's happening to your soldiers is key, and sometimes just making sure you know what's going on all over the battlefield is the biggest test of your ability.

At the end of the day, it's an interesting and challenging game. The Starship Troopers stylings certainly make it an eye-catching proposition (even if it's fairly minimalistic, Rocket Bear has conjured up a cohesive and satisfying aesthetic), but it's not a meathead in the same way that its source material is. Advancement requires determination and consideration, and thousands and thousands of digital bullets, but it's worth it because turning the tide in Infested Planet, finding that sweet spot, it's what makes it such a satisfying game.