As we play offers the thought strands of the reviewer as they’re going through the game. This offers unique content for the reader so they can come to understand the conflicting feelings of the reviewer as they’re playing a game for the very first time. All feedback on this concept is welcome.
I must admit that I came to the Earth Defence Force party late. This being my first encounter with the third person exterminate-em-up, I had no idea what to expect.
I was, however, not expecting the pure B movie cheese of EDF 2025. The intro to the game reminded me of that episode of The Simpsons when the titular family head off to Japan and encounter the hit TV show Battling Seizure Robots. There’s funky electro music and more flashing lights than down your local disco, and it reminded me of some of the early games on the original Playstation that I enjoyed picking out of the bargain bin.
I suited up as a Ranger – the standard battle unit – and tweaked him to have a slightly Claret and Blue outfit. When I was ready to crush some giant bugs, I gave the game the go-ahead to load…and I waited, and waited, then waited some more. Seriously, I thought the game had crashed it took SO long to load. Then, suddenly, I was on the battlefield with a voice over announcing that there were reports of giant insects asking me to check them out. “But there haven’t been any giant insects in eight years!” exclaimed one of my squad. A quick look at the radar showed a bunch of red dots off to the north, so off we ran until we saw a host of terrified civilians legging it down the road. “GIANT INSECTS!” Screamed one. “But we haven’t seen them in eight years.” cried another. It was at this point that I realised there was only one script and everyone had the same part…
Then I found the giant ants crawling all over the sky scrapers and charged in head first, all guns blazing. The ants fell like, well ants before the mighty magnifying glass that was my machine gun. Hundreds of the little blighters turned into so much giant screen clutter in a matter of minutes. Although I also managed to accidentally demolish an apartment building with my rocket launcher: my bad. The ants were dead. The insect invasion must surely be over.
But wait, there’s more over here. “GIANT ANTS”, “But they have been gone for eight years”… yes, yes I remember that. So we ran across town picking up the brightly coloured boxes dropped by the giant ants (It is never fully explained why our foes are carrying human sized armour and weapons, but hey-ho).
And so it goes, for several missions. Strangely, despite the absolute lack of skill required, the novelty of blasting giant bugs doesn’t wear thin… until it does. This is third person blasting in its absolutely most basic form. No need to take cover, no need to worry about the enemy A.I: just run forward and shoot. There is a steady flow of new weapons to keep things interesting: from a shotgun to grenades and huge rocket launchers. There are also four classes to try out; a standard soldier, a weird flying semi-nude lady, a man in a welding mask that can summon tanks, and a big-ass mech type thingumy.
However, despite a huge number of weapons, difficulty levels and four quite varied classes to try out, the grind of killing giant insects gets old well before the 85 levels have been exhausted. There’s certainly more fun to be had in local co-op, making the latter two classes actually useful while having a laugh with a friend, probably from a post-drunk trip to the pub. There’s also online co-op and a versus mode, but there’s nothing here that hasn’t been done better somewhere else, probably on Ps2.
Final Analysis
If you can look past the awful load times, glitchy PS2 graphics and are happy to concentrate on blasting bugs with a myriad of weapons, there is plenty of fun to be had. If you’re looking for polish, story and game requiring skill and strategy, best you give this one a miss.
Technical Competency – 5/10
Graphical State / Sound Quality – 5/10
Network Stability – N/A.
Overall – 5/10
Time Played: Five Hours
If you have any specific questions about the game, noticed any problems or don’t feel we’ve answered something specifically enough, sound off in the comments below and we’ll get right on replying.
