Starship Troopers: The Roughneck Chronicl

So yeah, I finally found a copy of these old CGI shows I used to see now and then on the SciFi channel on saturday mornings.

It's called "Starship Troopers: The Roughneck Chronicles". I just got done watch the first 5 episodes, which made up "The Pluto Campaign". Not bad, not as cool as I remember it, but not bad.

Sadly, it follows the movie a bit more than the book though. The bugs are the same as in the movie, not as Heinlein described them. The Power Armor is there, but not as kickass as from the book; it basically just a glorified space suit for most of the troops. No real use of jumpjets, except for the insertions(which are close to the book). The HUD is in this fold down visor and doesn't do all the things Heinlein described, nor is it operated in the same way. The weapons are close, but they still don't make sense because they are just normal rifles and launchers and whatnot, and they are always getting dropped; I would have attached them to the armor.  Rico looks Irish, instead of Brazilian. There is other stuff, but it's a lot closer to the book as a whole....Much better than the movie, even though it jumps right into the campaign with only flashbacks of the whole signing up and training part of the story.

Otherwise, the graphics aren't bad. The faces could have been done better, but otherwise everything looks pretty good. Let's not forget that this is a somewhat old series. The voice acting and dialog isn't bad either, but it gets kind of corny sometimes and the cliches tend to be a little overplayed. I've only watched the first campaign of the series, but the battles played out pretty well, even though they reused the "trooper down, go be a hero and help them" thing a little too much. Overall, on the non-Heinlein-geek front, petty good.

Over all, I'd give it a 3.5 out of 5, even though I haven't watched the whole series. It could be a little better done, and they could have darkened it up a bit(no one has died yet and the blood and gore is played down), but not bad. I would definitely check it out if you are into Heinlein and liked Starship Troopers, or if you're just a scifi fan looking for something that didn't get much publicity....

Either way, it gets my recommendation. Check it out.

The book is definitely worth reading.

.Ryan wrote: The book is definitely worth reading.

wait are you talking about the animated tv show? i use to love to watch that in the mornings before school started.

There was a Commadore 64 Starship Troopers, and I got the newer PC game from Destineer software. Good shooter, if you have a good computer there are literally thousands of bugs per encounter (if you don't do it right). Kinda mimics the 1st movie.

Still like the AH board game, and if I remmember somewhere in storage is a minatures game of ST, late 80's early 90's genre.

This is rather timely... I was just rereading this for the umpteenth time this weekend on my leadership course. We had a lot of downtime, and I finished the book in under two days. One of my absolute favourite works of fiction.

I've still got the whole series in some corner of my hard drive somewhere... That was a fun show.