Standing on a beach, I watch beyond the ocean with my fellow comrades as we prepare for an assault on the giant looming robots slowly walking our way. Armed with only our guns and our wits, we prepare for the worst. Suddenly, on our radar a massive wave of giant red ants appears from over the hill behind us. With all other options exhausted, I charge head first into the critters and start gunning away, hoping for the best. Giant bugs in front of me, giant robots behind me, and now aircraft directly above me, the battlefield rages on while all of this is happening, giving me no time to rest. Welcome to the Earth Defense Force, soldier, and prepare for the fight of your life.
Earth Defense Force 2017 tells the story of the EDF, a special troop formed with the sole task of defending the world against any otherworldly threat that may come its way. Aliens have finally been detected, and in an unsurprising turn of events, it turns out they’re bent on taking over and wiping out all signs of life on the planet. Other than the small bits of radio chatter you’ll frequently hear in the background as you play, the story is given a backseat approach, allowing you to focus more on the action spread across the game’s whopping 53 levels. There’s a lack of variety though, as you’ll find yourself exploring the same few environments in the game and shooting at the same enemies on screen, which can burn you out rather quickly.
Similar to games like Dynasty Warriors, you’ll find that levels are pretty straight-forward: use the radar to head to the next grouping of dots, blast them off the planet, rinse and repeat. Enemies will occasionally drop health, weapons, and armor, all of which are vital towards your success later in the upper difficulties. There are 150 different weapons to choose from in a myriad of different types, such as Assault Rifles, Shotguns, Rocket Launchers, and others. Before each level, you are given the choice to take two of them with you, allowing you to set up different play styles or strategies. As you build your library, you’ll find that the differences between weapons of the same type are extremely miniscule, rendering most of them useless except for the top-tier ones. There are some vehicles you can pilot, but much like your squad mates, they are often useless and better employed as cannon fodder.
There are five shades of difficulty, and while they don’t change the levels, they instead make the enemies stronger. This requires you to plan out some form of strategy to the point that you can sometimes just barely get by. To even the odds, the game features a sense of progression, requiring you to farm previous levels for armor upgrades from defeated enemies. Each piece of armor collected adds one extra point to your health, allowing you to absorb more damage. By doing this, along with farming for new weapons, you’ll find that passing even the highest difficulty can be a cakewalk. This can be a menial task, but the payout is worth it.
The game comes off as cheap, especially with the way the game looks, as everything has that "plastic toy" appearance. When enemies die, they simply freeze up and bounce off the ground like a lifeless shell, eventually disappearing into thin air. Buildings, while towering over the city, crumble at the mere touch of a rocket, showing off the game’s awesome sense of scale. As you play through you’ll find yourself toppling even the tallest of towers, along with the giant UFOs and robots and other boss characters that make you seem insignificant in comparison. As levels become more packed with enemies and explosions, the first thing that you’ll find is that the frame rate takes a hit, sometimes making things a slideshow. You’ll probably be too enamored by the scale of the game in the first place to even notice or care about these things, anyway.
The game won’t take you that long to complete on the lower difficulty levels, but you’ll find yourself stuck or having to grind your way through the harder levels. What’s great about this is that EDF’s design is setup for that "just one more stage" type of gameplay, and before you know it you’ll have half the game done in at least a day. The game also features split-screen co-op, which is probably the preferred way to play, as it allows you to tackle the harder difficulties much easier. There’s a Battle Mode, which is just a death-match mode for two people, so just forget about playing that, period. The achievements for the game are pretty straightforward, with one for completion of each difficulty and for collecting all 150 weapons in the game, but the point values make them something worth striving for.
Earth Defense Force 2017 is obviously a budget title, but the game stands out for its concept and the fact that it’s just fun to play. It’s not too often you’ll see a title like this come across, where you can just forgive how a game looks from a technical point and enjoy it for what it is, finding that the time has just passed by. Best played in bursts, Earth Defense Force is a title that deserves to be in any library of someone who wants to have a good time with a friend.
