Earth Defense Force
Developer:
Sandlot
Publisher:
D3 Publisher
Platforms:
Xbox 360, PS3
Release:
February 18, 2013
Genre:
Third Person Shooter, Arcade
Modes:
Single-player, Local Co-Op, Online Co-Op
Availability:
Xbox Market Place, PlayStation Store, Online Stores
Disclaimer:
-
This review is for the Xbox 360 version
-
I got this game for $15 on Amazon
-
I don't have Xbox Gold so I didn't try multi-player
-
Laser Chainsaws are cool
- Images are from the official press release that was taken from IGN.
Info:
The
“Earth Defense Force” series started as game under the Japanese
discount brand know as “Simple 2000” series for the PlayStation
2. These were budget priced game that were made by small developer
teams. The first game was titled, “Monster Attack”, which got a
European release. “Global Defense Force” was the sequel and also
got a European release. While they were sequels, they had nothing to
do with each other story-wise. None of the games got a North American
release as the Publisher feared that Americans would not like that
kind of game. “Global Defense Force” would get a Japanese sequel
know as “Global Defense Force Tactics”.
The
series would finally reach American shores with the Xbox 360 release
of “Earth Defense Force 2017” in 2007. It was a remake of
“Monster Attack” with better graphics, new levels, and more
features. A spinoff, by an American developer, would produce “Earth
Defense Force Insect Armageddon”. Finally, the real sequel would
arrive three years latter known as “Earth Defense Force
2025”. A year latter a port/expansion would be released
exclusively for the PS4 known as “Earth Defense force 4.1: The
Shadows of New Despair”.
“Earth
Defense Force 4.1” has 4 new single-player mission and 90 new
multi-player missions. New enemies, DLC mutations, and new mutations
are added into the missions. There is various game-play improvements
like being able to recover when knocked down and weapons now have a
laser sight for aiming. If you have a PS4 then it would be worth
buying EDF 4.1 instead.
Story:
The
story of “Earth Defense Force” is a B-movie sci-fi horror style
that is written in a serious tone. It's not a deep plot, but carries
the player through the story. The narrative is delivered through the
discussions on the communicator and through some NPC's in the field.
A majority of the missions deliver new updates to the plot.
Graphics:
The
visuals are not the best, but they are not bad. It's
a “realistic' style with plenty of color.
Everything has detailed textures with only
the enemies looking slightly blurry up close. Ravager’s have a
shiny metallic look to their machines. and the ants have a slight
shin to their. Shells. Spiders have strands
of hair on them, but their skin textures are slightly blurry.
Since the maps are big, there is plenty of pop-in of objects and
textures. While it's not really noticeable
in the city maps, you can see it clearly in outdoor maps. There
has no anti-aliasing so the distance can look quite jaggy if you are
close to the TV. The
game resolution is 1080p
and has a base frame-rate of 30 frames per second.
Game-play:
“Earth
Defense Force 2025” is a third-person shooter. The camera
perspective is centered slightly higher then your character which is
like old third person games before “Resident Evil 4”. There are
two control schemes; technical which is typical third person controls
and normal which spreads out the actions to individual buttons and
forces you to auto aim. Technical uses the least amount of buttons
with most of them being the shoulder buttons. Normal doesn't allow
you to look around with the right analogue stick which feels more
like you are playing an old PS1 game. In each control scheme you can
change the control buttons however you want. Vehicles use the same
movement controls when backing up so it can be slightly awkward to
get use to. All vehicles have a stiff movement and look controls that
can't be adjust. They also don't get an aiming reticule so it can be
hard to tell where you are hitting at long distances.
The
missions are simple, kill everything. Enemies are spawned in waves
and when you defeat them all the mission ends. Some missions can
easily end in less then 5 minutes and some can take 10 minutes or
longer. It's a simple arcade format that anyone can pick up and play
at anytime. When enemies are killed, they may drop, heath, armor
upgrades, or weapon drops. The weapon drops are random and based on
the difficulty you play. Armor upgrades are effected by difficulty,
but also the amount you pick up. What you pick up doesn't mean that
your armor will upgrade to that amount. While it may sound simple,
the challenge is surviving these waves and defeating them all. You
will go from shooting ants to taking down mother-ships. The missions
will throw surprises at you when you least expect it. There are 85
missions with 45 additional missions in the DLC packs. You can play
missions in single player, 2 player split screen co-op, or 4 player
online co-op. I haven't tried online as I don't have Xbox live gold.
Difficulty
is varies quiet a bit in many different factors. There are five
levels of difficulty that make, however you don't actually want to
jump to the hardest difficulty right away. When you chose a harder
difficulty, enemies become a lot tougher to the point were your
starting weapons can take forever to kill them and can kill you in
one hit. The difficulty in fighting enemies relies on heavily on the
stats of the weapons you pick up and the amount of armor your class
has. Missions themselves, vary quiet a bit in challenge. Some
missions can be really hard while other can be beaten in less then 5
minutes. The third factor depends on if you're playing with friends
or not. Some missions benefit from having friends to help you out.
The last factor depends on your class. Some missions are easier with
a certain class' weapons compared to another.
A
lot of the maps are reused for many missions though most of the time,
the action often takes place in a small portions of the map at
different spots. Some missions will use more of the map then others.
You can go to other area's of the map though it will be empty. When
there is so much action going on, it can hard to tell that you've
been playing in the same map, though you will eventually notice. All
of the maps feature destructible buildings and objects for your
advantage and disadvantage. The advantage is is with nothing in the
way, you can easily kill everything in sight, but you will lose cover
and the ability to create choke points to take down enemies. As you
play the game, new enemies are introduced that introduce new
challenges to deal with. You will quickly face them along with many
of the other enemies that you have faced before.
You
have four classes to chose from called, Ranger, Wing Diver, Air
Raider, and Fencer. Ranger is the foot solider that has a wide
variety of weapons they can use and can pilot vehicles that an Air
Raider brings in. Wing Diver use jet packs to fly and use high tech
weaponry. The Wing Diver and the Ranger are typical shooter classes
you should chose at first as the other two are different and harder
to use. Air raider is a support class that can heal units, call in
airstrikes, set up turrets, and call in vehicles to use. In
single-player, it's game at a slower paced compered to the Ranger and
the Wing Diver. The advantages of the class lean more towards
multi-player then single-player, but it's still playable alone Fencer
is an advanced class that can use two weapons at once. They are a
tank with lots of firepower, but will take some time to learn to use
as they have their own exclusive control scheme. It's a more faster
paced style then the air raider, but still not as fast paced as the
other two.
There
are 788 weapons and vehicles in total to chose from that is spread
out for each class. No class uses the same weapons and some have
exclusive weapon types that no one else has. From assault rifles, to
laser chainsaws, to mechs, you have a variety to chose from. Each
weapon has a level category that distinguishes it's tier compared to
others in that category. While there are tiers, each weapon has
different attributes that make even low tier weapons useful depending
on the mission and difficulty. To unlock higher tier weapons, you
will need to play on the harder difficulties to unlock them for you
class. On higher difficulties though, you will be more picky in
selecting a weapon do to how stronger the enemies are while on easier
levels you are free to experiment without worry.
Technical:
The
frame-rate holds up well, when there are about 20 to 30 on screen.
However, when explosions, gore, body parts, and building derbies are
flying everywhere, along with hundreds of enemies on screen, the
frame-rate will drop into the single digits. In the latter stages,
facing hundreds of enemies is not a rare sight. Sometimes the game
will freeze for a second as a new event is triggered while playing.
Another
issues is that enemy ranged attacks can sometimes pierce through
buildings and hit you. With Retarious, this is a pain as it can trap
you between objects with no way to free yourself. If you are using
close range weapons, then you can also have no way to win. On inferno
difficulty, being hit by any attacks is a dangerous.
The
AI is simple as they will ether follow you and attack enemies or stay
in their area and fight what they see. This behavior also applies to
the enemies except they don't always focus just on you. Since the AI
is simple, it tends to get lost or get stuck on buildings and tall
terrain if you get far enough away from them. It doesn't happen too
often and they tend to get themselves unstuck after awhile and catch
up with you.
Audio:
“Earth
Defense Force 2025” sound track is mostly a rock and roll
soundtrack with a few orchestral songs. Many of the songs are the
same with some minor variation and adjustments to the song. For
example, the Earth Defense Force theme played with darker tones, but
another version will play it as an upbeat victory theme. The songs
that are original are mostly from the starting screens before you
chose a mission. Unfortunately they do get repetitive to hear them so
many times. By default I found the audio settings for the game tend
to obscure the music for the game so you may need to turn down the
other sound settings and raise the music volume. This might an issue
my tv, so check to make sure your audio system is working properly.
Despite
this plot being B-movie sci-fi horror, the voice acting is good.
Voice actors do a good job in conveying the horror and dread the
characters are feeling. Each of the characters sound distinctive and
easy to distinguish from one and another.
Thoughts:
This
game is awesome. Not every game makes me think that, but Earth
Defense Force does. It's a simple yet fun game that is easy to
pick-up and play. That is what makes it so great. It's like playing
an old arcade game with HD visuals. While it may not be the best
looking game and it does have technical issues, the game-play is what
makes this game great. Flying as a wing diver and cutting up space
ships with a laser chainsaw is something that is rare to see in
games. Game like this remind me why I like video games. I got a
physical copy for the 360 console for $15 on amazon. It doesn't have
the extra's of “Earth Defense Force 4.1”, but the price alone
make it worth getting. I would recommend it to everyone.
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