The Bug Hunt begins!
- The Human Race has survived the most brutal threats to it's fragile existence.
Famines. Plagues. Fires. Floods and Diseases may have ravaged and scrapped our planet.
But the human race has always prevailed.
Humankind developed the technology to combat these threats and the technology to inflict and survive the most bloody conflicts.
The Armorines were the military option we hopes we'd never have to use. An advanced, virtually indestructible fighting force created to withstand even the devastation of a nuclear attack, their intensive training, technological superiority and supreme strength made them the army every nation desires...
Armorines: Project S.W.A.R.M. is a sci-fi FPS action game released by Acclaim, based on characters of the same name from Valiant Comics, which Acclaim had acquired.
Set in some unspecified time in the future, humanity have lost the planet in the aftermath of a war against alien bugs. With legions and legions of insectoid monsters ruling over multiple regions on earth, each colony dominated by their own Queen, all hopes lies on the resistance forces established by the surviving humans.
An elite squadron of Space Marines - the titular Armorines, named after their high-tech, weapon-equipped armour which can withstand all sorts of hostile environment and combat the bugs - are dispatched to earth, on a mission to take down the insect hives by destroying their Queens, one at a time.
Players can choose between two Armorines - the heavy weapons expert Tony Lewis and machine-gun wielding Myra Lane, as their main characters. Besides combating bugs in story mode, the game also allows a versus mode for between two to four players.
In Valiant's original comics, the Armorines originated in the X-O Manowar book, where they were a group of U.S. Marines who wore power armors that were knockoffs of the alien power armor worn by the main character, Aric. The version from Acclaim's rebooted comic was similar.
Expansion Pak found. Time to blow the Hive into Orbit!
- After the End: Humanity have lost the war against invading alien bugs in the future, and it's up to you to reclaim the planet by taking out the insect queens and destroy their hives.
- An Arm and a Leg: Most of the Queen bugs will gradually lose limbs as the battle continues, showing that yes, you're inflicting damage on them.
- Antlion Monster: The Queen of the Siberia stage is one of these, a massive insectoid creature digging a hole out of the snow as it tries dragging you in.
- Arm Cannon: The right arm of your armored suit, which can be equipped with all sorts of ammunition for combating the bugs.
- Breath Weapon: The higher-level bug enemies can fire projectile attacks at you from a distance, either in the form of energy bolts or balls of plasma. The Queens at the end of most stages can fire energy blasts which One-Hit Kill you.
- Bug War: Pretty much the whole bread-and-butter of the game, where earth has been conquered by a race of hostile insectoid monsters and it's up to you and your fellow Armorines to take them down and reclaim the earth. Inevitable considering the whole game is a Starship Troopers Whole-Plot Reference.
- Giant Spider: Most of the larger bugs resembles arachnids, and can crawl alongside walls before leaping at you.
- Grenade Launcher: You can obtain grenades for your Arm Cannon, which fires exploding projectiles that deals better damage than your default machine-guns.
- Insect Queen: Each stage ends with a boss fight against a Queen, a large bug that all the other bug-aliens respond to. The final level plays this one most seriously, with the whole series of levels being a giant insect hive in space.
- It Can Think: Yeah, those gigantic insect-looking alien bugs? They're assumed to be mindless monstrosities for most players, until the first stage reveals they've hijacked a series of rockets and is using them against humans.
- Lethal Lava Land: One of the missions is set inside an active volcano, where you'll need to traverse lava pools using platforms or bridges or suffer some serious damage, which not even your armor can protect you against. What's even worse is that bugs born in the volcano have developed natural immunity against the lava, allowing them to crawl atop the burning surface to attack you.
- Night-Vision Goggles: Your armor in the jungle mission is equipped with a night-vision visor, which comes in handy since said stage is set at night.
- Ominous Fog: The Egypt stages are shrouded in fog, all the time, for some reason. Expect plenty of giant monsters to suddenly pop out and attack.
- Planet Spaceship: The final stage is set in the bug's headquarters, a floating spaceship whose interior is a cavernous world infested with monsters. And right in it's core, the final Queen.
- Powered Armor: You - and the rest of the Armorines - all went against the bugs clad in enhanced, full-body concealing armour, which allows you to take far more punishment than regular marines. See, that's why there's called ARMORines.
- Shock Stick: One of the power-ups the game grants you, which turns your current weapon into an extending, three-pronged, electrified fork. It's exclusively a close-range weapon, but it can deliver powerful shocks that destroys large enemies easily (provided you can get close enough).
- Smashed Eggs Hatching: More than one stage in the bug hives requires you to blow up the eggs to complete mission objectives, and most of the exploding eggs will produce a single insect drone that attacks you immediately.
- Space Marine: Your player characters are a pair of Space 'Armorines, fighting insectoid alien monsters.
- The Squadette: The female playable character, Myra, appears to be the sole female Armorine among the platoon.
- Stationary Boss: The Queen of the lava stage is unable to move around, owing to being confined in the middle of her lava pool. Though she can still hurl flaming chunks of rocks at you, besides the standard projectile attacks and having extending pincers.
- To Serve Man: The bugs feeds on human, and more than one area have you coming across bugs carrying humans - some still alive! - in their pincers to their nests to feed upon.
- Zerg Rush: As the game sends increasingly large numbers of bugs, expect to be constantly overwhelmed by hordes and hordes of insects at every turn.
