Saturday, October 09, 2010
Like Blood From A Stone
That's the summary if you're playing through Earth Defense Force 2017 for the Xbox 360.
EDF2017, published by Japanese company D3, is a throwback to the old days when games had no major storyline and fancy graphics and they were just plain fun. And hard. In EDF, you are Storm One, a nameless man fighting an alien invasion of giant robots, ants, and spiders. Lots and lots of robots, ants, and spiders.
That's a lot of ants.
The game boasts over 150 weapons and 5 difficulties. People shouldn't have a hard time beating the game on Easy and Normal, but the game gets absolutely BRUTAL on harder difficulties Hard, Harder, and Inferno. Some may complain about the graphics of the game not being the greatest, but for a Japanese import budget title, you really can't complain. Especially when the game is this much fun.
The whole game plays out in an awful, Ed Wood-style monster movie: giant bugs attack Tokyo, and you have to stop them. That's it. Kill the bugs.
And do it AWESOME.
The voice acting is awful B-movie cheese at its best. It's mindless fun, but I do have a few complaints about the game. First off, the game lags a lot when there's a ton of action on the screen, which is 80% of the time. Second, which sort of ties into the first complaint, is the lack of online cooperative play. With the lag in the main game, throwing online lag is a recipe for disaster. You can play split-screen with a second player, but shrinking your field of vision in a game like this tends to be a bad idea.
Third is the difficulty. I enjoy a challenge, but this game is ridiculous. Inferno mode is a one-or-two-hit-kill masochist paradise, if you aren't strong enough to fight the onslaught of hundreds of insects. And that's just the first level: you have 52 more to go.
Finally is the achievements. There are six: One for finishing the game on its five difficulties, and one for collecting all of the weapons in the game. I have played the game for 36 hours, and only have the Easy and Normal difficulty achievements.
The way to beat the game on harder difficulties is to get Armor drops from killing enemies, which increases your maximum health. I currently have about 3300 health. The maximum is somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000.
I have a long way to go.
In all, its fun and for $12 now, you can have mindless fun too. Although I wouldn't recommend playing for long amounts of time: you'll get burned out quickly.
EDF2017, published by Japanese company D3, is a throwback to the old days when games had no major storyline and fancy graphics and they were just plain fun. And hard. In EDF, you are Storm One, a nameless man fighting an alien invasion of giant robots, ants, and spiders. Lots and lots of robots, ants, and spiders.
That's a lot of ants.The whole game plays out in an awful, Ed Wood-style monster movie: giant bugs attack Tokyo, and you have to stop them. That's it. Kill the bugs.
And do it AWESOME.Third is the difficulty. I enjoy a challenge, but this game is ridiculous. Inferno mode is a one-or-two-hit-kill masochist paradise, if you aren't strong enough to fight the onslaught of hundreds of insects. And that's just the first level: you have 52 more to go.
Finally is the achievements. There are six: One for finishing the game on its five difficulties, and one for collecting all of the weapons in the game. I have played the game for 36 hours, and only have the Easy and Normal difficulty achievements.
The way to beat the game on harder difficulties is to get Armor drops from killing enemies, which increases your maximum health. I currently have about 3300 health. The maximum is somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000.
I have a long way to go.
In all, its fun and for $12 now, you can have mindless fun too. Although I wouldn't recommend playing for long amounts of time: you'll get burned out quickly.
Labels: review, video games
