Earth Defense Force 2017

There are very few games made that only have one sense of purpose. In the early days of gaming if you played a shooting game that is all you would do is shoot anything that came in your way. If you played a racing game, all you should do is race to your heart's content. Now games have multiple genres mixed into them, which helps keep players involved and keep the game fresh from the “A.D.D.” world that we live in today. Earth Defense Force 2017 takes gamers back to their roots, in a way, because your main and only objective is to take out the enemies in front of you with as much firepower as possible, and that is it.

The story to Earth Defense Force 2017 is really simplistic and serves no purpose other then to give a background for the game. It starts off in 2013 when scientists on Earth discover many cryptic messages from deep in space that proves that we are not alone in the Universe. In 2015 after two years of failed attempts to contact these aliens, a decision is made to create a contingency plan which became known as the Earth Defense Force or EDF for short, in case these aliens might be hostile. In the year 2017 war breaks loose on Earth as these aliens began to attack everything in sight. It is up to you, a member of the Earth Defense Force, to save the planet and bring peace to the world.

Players will be able to take part in destroy malicious invading aliens for 53 various levels. The problem is that most of the areas look identical so there is little variety. Another problem is that the mission objectives rarely change, it is destroy all of the aliens before they destroy you. This can get extremely repetitive, but it is a good thing that this game offers co-op play so you and a friend can destroy the aliens together. This is one of the best features in the game, allowing you and a buddy to take on the onslaught of evil aliens, and this does help give this game more replay value.

There are four different vehicles that you will be able to control in this game, each having its own distinct characteristics. First off is the tank that has very heavy armor and its cannon will take out aliens with great effect, it is pretty fast at getting you where you need to be. Next up is the Airbike which is really fast, but it has no armor and a weak machine gun. The helicopter is a decent vehicle that has a nice machine gun and even missile fire to take out the largest enemies. Lastly is the battle machine vegalta, which has extreme amount of firepower and armor, the main problem is that it is extremely slow and has almost no maneuverability. If you see any of these on the battlefield it is a good idea to hop into one to help turn the tide of battle on your side.

The graphics for this game are a mixed bag and that makes it really difficult to give a final response of it they are either good or bad. First off the character and city models are really great looking. Players will be able to tell that the developers spent a lot of time making sure that everything looked just right, from the animations, detail, explosions, and even when you destroy a building and see it tumbling down. Also the various vehicles look really well done with their shinny metals glimmering in the sun.

The problem is with everything else. During later missions you will have so many enemies on screen at one time, with all of your Earth Defense Force teammates firing missiles and their guns that the framerate really starts to falter. Not only that but you might get a bit disoriented in all the action just trying to get out finding an enemy to shoot. One of the major things that was irritating to see is how the items were displayed on the screen. Since you have a really nice city and character models you would expect to see a nice polygonal images where items were dropped, but instead you get a texture-based image that shows: weapon, armor, or two types of health kits. Since this game is aiming to be next generation, they shouldn’t have used something that would have been ok a couple of generations ago.

The audio from this game is pretty bad. The first thing that you will notice is that the music sounds worse then what you will find in most ‘B movies.’ The fun doesn’t stop there; the sound effects are especially blurred out and really don’t sound as crisp and clean as other games that feature many different forms of weapon fire. Also there is the fact that nearly every gun sounds identical to the next one. Next up is the voice acting, while it can be hilarious at times, it is really cheesy dialog. That is not all, something is messed up with the 5.1 audio detection, as you will see something in front of you shouting an order, but the sound will come from behind you. Even though this can be a bit freaky and funny at the same time, it is something that should have been caught while this game was being developed.

Earth Defense Force 2017 is rated Teen and contains violence, animated blood, and mild language.

Gameplay: 7.0
The gameplay is really fun, even though it is extremely repetitious. There is something about wanting to complete the 53 levels, which have the same objectives, to save the world.

Graphics: 6.8
The character and city models look very nice. The main problem is everything else isn’t so good, from the overblown physics, the horrible “texture only” upgrades that enemies drop, and the framerate really kill this game. 

Sound: 5.5
The audio is not that good at all. The audio for the characters is so bad it is funny and the gunfire sounds really muffled.

Difficulty: Medium
The game has five different difficulty options to choose from. The higher you choose the difficulty the more enemies there will be on screen and it will be harder to kill them.

Concept: 5.0
Find alien, riddle them with bullets, repeat.

Multiplayer: 7.5
Even though the game is extremely repetitious it is made more fun by playing co-op with a friend killing all the alien scum bags in your way.

Overall: 6.9
Players will be able to tell that this game had a low budget, because almost every area of the game needs improvement. Even though this is the case, this is an extremely fun game to play with your friends just because you want to kill everything in sight and protect humanity from extenuation. This is a great rental game to play with your friends.