Are you man enough to be the world’s most bad ass exterminator? Are you man enough to look a spider the size of a Volkswagen Bus in the eye(s) and not even flinch? Are you man enough to withstand being in what is pretty much a copy of Starship Troopers? Because Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon thinks you are.
So the basic premise is this: you are a guy in a big ol’ armored suit with lots of guns and metal and explodey things on it, and there are a whole lot of over-sized bugs wrecking the city and generally making nuisances of themselves. Go kill you some of that. That is what you do. Every bug in the entire city must be eliminated. It’s about as straightforward as you can get. It’s the video game equivalent to a B movie. It’s fast, it’s cheesy, it’s cheap (not as in looks but as in money, for the game costs $40) and it provides you the basest of thrills. And I have to admit, it’s kinda neat.
A bit of sidetracking for a bit, if I may. Does anyone remember the old N64 game Body Harvest? It had you going through time in huge maps blowing up giant bugs and stealing cars? This kind of reminds me of that, sans the stealing car parts. The maps are big. I needed the minimap in the upper right hand corner to tell me where the bugs were a lot of the time. That is, when they weren’t swarming all over me. There were a lot of the bastards. I could shoot through a lot of them, sure. You also have this nifty shield that can unleash powered up attacks. You can have a constant stream of energy zapping things that come near you as one attack, or you can do my favorite attack. Wait until a lot of enemies are around you and turn yourself into a bomb. Yes, that’s right, swarm right over me. This will end well for you. You fools…
Now while this is pretty neat and all, you must be aware of the negatives. Before I begin on this part, I just want to say that its kind of ironic that the things that are great about the game are also what might push people away. For starters, the B movie video game feel is very evident. This is not the next Halo or something. You will not get an epic quest or a compelling story. It’s only $40, but that’s all its worth. The action is as standard as it gets. Run to a point, kill all the things there, run to another point, kill more things, etc. It’s very arcade like in that regard, but also very limiting. Also, this is not the prettiest game ever created for the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Again, budget title here, we must be understanding.
Is EDF bad? No, I wouldn’t say that. I may seem harsh on it, but it’s not a bad game. It just is what it is. A fun $40 game that does exactly what it needs to do. It lets you shoot giant spiders in the face. Giant, realistic looking spiders. Giant…terrifying…realistic…spiders…sorry, what? I was having a flashback. Trauma does that to me. Okay, yeah, EDF isn’t bad. Just budget. Make up your own mind as to whether that’s good or not.
