Got a tenner burning a hole in your pocket? Then look elsewhere.
Yet another awful game that will only get played and purchased (please don't) due to a Steam free weekend.
Essentially, it's a 2D Unreal Tournament knockoff with strangely high system requirements and a frighteningly low fun factor. The levels look like something out of a Worms game, with gaps everywhere and platforms all over the place. I love Worms, but it doesn't work here.
There is a variety of weapons, all of which feel vastly underpowered except for the rockets and green energy gun. The gimmick is that you can fly around with a jetpack, which is more annoying than fun, to be honest. It's like someone played Gunster, a game so dreadful that even ijji.com dropped it (and THAT'S saying a lot) and decided to add 3D graphics and, even worse, charge people for it.
There's no spirit to this game. It feels boring and uninspired. Lame weapons, bland levels, sloppy controls, annoying sounds that don't tell you much... There's so much wrong with this game before I even get to the multiplayer issues that I'm surprised Steam bothered to sell this at all. If it was the product of a few guys making a freeware game in their spare time, fine, I'd be okay with that. But there's a certain amount of decency I expect from a title that I'm expected to pay real money for, and that is sorely lacking in this cesspool of mediocrity. I'd much rather pay for Nexiuz than Booster Trooper.
Botmaches are boring and feel drained of any kind of fun at all. The repetitive, low-quality sound effects and generic music add nothing to the experience. Increasing the number of bots really reduces the framerate. UT2004 can handle large Onslaught maps with 15 bots, and Booster Trooper lags on a tiny Apartment map with only 5? Something ain't right.
For some reason, rather than promptly uninstalling this waste of 500 megs, I decided to venture forth into the multiplayer arena. If I could fire up the flux capacitor, hit 88 MPH and go back in time to earlier this afternoon, I'd slap myself across the face and stop myself from downloading Booster Trooper in the first place. That's how bad the multiplayer is.
Multiplayer mode is nothing more than a twisted test of your patience. Lag issues prevent the game from being playable at all. I tried some CTF. Big mistake. Due to the lag, it was impossible to tell when the flag was picked up or who had it. I'd float over to the enemy base, read the message that I'd picked up the flag, and begin to leave, only to see the flag stay at the base instead of attach itself to my character. I'd run around and see players' nametags floating aimlessly in the map, in places the players themselves obviously weren't. The notification messages in the corner of the screen ("[player] has taken the Red flag") would show up on a "when-I-feel-like-it" basis, while the warning sounds (presumably those of "flag is taken" or "team has scored") would continually blare, providing no information whatsoever. Touching my team's flag in my base when I was carrying the flag would do nothing at all. Sometimes, I'd respawn in the enemy base, right near their flag. Other times, I'd respawn WITH their flag. Without warning, I would occasionally warp across the map and end up somewhere else, with different equipment. Sometimes I'd die and be unable to spawn at all, missing an entire match.
The only real gameplay to speak of (other than some useless unlockable colour schemes which are not worth the time/effort) are the Steam Achievements. Achievement whores will foam at the mouth over Booster Trooper's 260 Achievements. What they might like even more is the fact that the Achievements are awarded when they shouldn't be. I got most of mine by failing the requirements: the "win a match" one was awarded after I lost hard, I didn't manage to get a Double Kill but was awarded the Achievement anyway, and all of the "survive a match without dying" Achievements were awarded in matches where I DID die or in matches during which I couldn't even spawn in the first place. The fact that the Achievements are so badly bugged and the sheer number of them suggest that DnS Development decided to hastily and lazily add Achievements as a way to get people interested in their terrible game.
Booster Trooper plays and feels like an effortless download-only console game, and not the kind that are worth your time and money. It costs $10 on Steam (regular price) and I wouldn't pay half that for this abortion of a train wreck. There are many better ways to blow a tenner, especially on Steam. Don't waste your time with this garbage, and certainly don't waste your money on it. If you want to play a GOOD free 2D shooter with Achievements on Steam, get Alien Swarm.
