Millennium Soldier: Expendable

A quiet moment.

A top-down run & gun shooter developed by Rage Software and released for the PC, PlayStation and Dreamcast.

It is the future and mankind has managed to build a galactic empire by terraforming worthless wastelands into habitable planets. However, humanity’s expansion is threatening by a war mongering alien race know as the Charva, who have conquered some of the distant colonies. A mothership full of expandable cloned super-soldiers is sent to eradicate the threat.

Being a throwback to overhead shooters such as Commando or Ikari Warriors, the game is quite light on story. However, it is not light on stuff to blow up, badass weapons and relentless hordes of enemies.

Not to be confused with The Expendables, though there are some similarities.

Tropes used in Millennium Soldier: Expendable include:

• Back-to-Back Badasses: The console covers.
• Camera Screw: The bonus levels and a few sections are played with a third person camera instead of the top-down view of the rest of the game.
• Chest Monster: Some of the human hostages are infected with Scorpius aliens and will explode if you get near.
• Exploding Barrels: Well, exploding crates.
• Excuse Plot
• Homing Projectile: The Spyra missiles.
• Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: The keycards.
• Justified Extra Lives: Since the player character is part of an identical clone army, a “life” is simply another clone replacing the one that just died.
• Planet Looters: The Charvas.
• Power Armor: The Krulgan Hulk suit.
• Short-Range Shotgun: The shotgun is actually somewhat accurate at long-range, but does almost no damage.
• Spread Shot: The Spread Pulse gun, though only after you upgrade it.
• Super Soldier: The player characters.
• Tech Demo Game: Much like many of Rage’s other games, the game was made to show-off the capabilities of the (then) next-gen graphic cards. It was also one of the flashier launch game of the Dreamcast,