Sentinel Reviews

Earth Defense Force 2025 (EDF 2025) is essentially a poor man’s Starship Troopers. The game consists of over a hundred levels where you and your allies fight giant bugs, huge robots and alien motherships and in the process you are likely to destroy entire city blocks just to get one pesky ant. 

 

The premise if the game seems ridiculous and frankly, it is. It is however one of the most over the top fun games I have played.

 

EDF is a 3rd person shooter made by the Japanese developers Sandlot. From the outset its clear this is a game that hasn’t been developed in the west. I do have a few issues about some of the design choices in the game, but l'll get to that later.

 

The game sees you fight through fairly short levels, usually taking no more than five or ten minutes to complete. You will fight giant ants the size of a double decker bus, spiders the size of bungalows and giant robots called “Hectors”. The wide range of enemies helps to provide diversity to the gameplay and while it boils down to “SHOOT EVERYTHING” it is engaging enough not to become too repetative.

 

There’s not much of a plot to speak of. Every mission starts with a simple block of text for you to read that will tell you what kind of enemy you will be fighting. It’s not the best method of immersing the player. In mission you will get radio chatter that will often give you a clue as to what to expect in the next mission. These little conversations can be easily missed while you gun down the dozens of enemies that are likely going to be trying to eat you. The voice acting in the EDF is, I think on purpose, reminiscent of and over the top B-movie. I personally found a lot of the in game dialogue to be sigh inducing repetative. I cant tell you the amount of times I heard “Giant Insects!” or “It’s been seven years since Giant Insects attacked”

 

I will say this now. If you want an engaging plot, any kind of story or AAA quality voice acting and writing don’t even finish reading this. Don’t buy this game.

If on the other hand you are like me and love blasting holes into massive aliens then let us continue.

 

You can play it solo but EDF is best when played with up to four players online

 

You can play as one of four classes.

The Ranger is your classic infantry. He has standard levels of health and can use machine guns, shotguns, rocket launchers and my personal favourite the grenade launcher.

 

The Wing Diver is a fast attack unit. Her weaponry and jet pack run from the same power supply. Her weapons seem to be anything from laser rifles to plasma cannons and a strange cylinder firing pulse weapon. She has very low health and is very hard to use well in combat. A lot of her weapons are fairly short ranged which means she has to get close to the enemy, on the harder difficulty levels she may only survive one or two hits before dying. My problem with her is that she is dressed in a boob tube and miniskirt. I know it sounds petty but I can’t help but feel she’s more of a masturbatory aid than anything else and for me at least, that’s fairly low down on my list of requirements for a giant bug game.

 

The Air Raider is a support character. The weapons he can carry are fairly limited, usually just a limpet gun (a cross between a shotgun and a grenade launcher) but he can still offer a staggering amount of fire support. The Air Raider can use laser designators to assist with the Fencers heavy missiles, he can call in air strikes and place turrets as well as calling in one of a number of vehicles (my favourite is the mech from Robocop). He can also support other players by placing health stations, power stations for the Wing Diver and guard posts that either reduce damage taken or buff the damage you deal.

 

 

The Fencer is the Tank of the group. He can carry four weapons that include Gatling guns, rocket launchers, mortar’s and close combat weapons like a Thunder hammer or axe. He has the most health of the classes and arguably the most fire power with the possible exception of the Air Raider and his tanks. The Fencer is very slow to move and is only really effective when an experienced player takes the controls. A lot of the Fencers weapons take a while to warm up to fire so getting in close, even with your oversized mallet, is usually a bad idea.

 

Upon killing giant bugs and robots you will sometimes find they drop HEALTH, ARMOUR or a WEAPON. Health is fairly self-explanatory, Armour will allow you to increase your overall health for that character and you will get a random weapon if you pick up the green WEAPON box.

 

EDF is a budget title and there’s no getting around that fact. There are numerous performance issues that bring the game to a grinding halt The level of frame rate drop is almost inexcusable when more than one player starts to level the city (always fun and a good tactic to get your kill zone). Enemies can fire through buildings and one particular attack that sees a massive spider catch you in a web and reel you in is controller bracingly frustrating when it webs you through a skyscraper’s walls.

 

By far the most enraging thing about this game is the brainless AI and the wild splash damage. I can’t tell you the amount of times I was firing my rapid fire grenade launcher and some civilian or an EDF chum would run out in front of me. Normally I’m not too bothered about friendly fire but when these NPC’s get in the way it will often result in a massive explosion that launches you into the air and takes off a fairly large chunk of your health.

 

IIt’s kind of fitting that a game about giant ants would have so many bugs. . . . . . <Pun ends>

 

There is a rather nice mechanic when it comes to healing comrades. When a player loses their health they can be revived by a friendly human player (no revives by AI). Nothing too unusual there I hear you say, well in EDF if you heal someone you literally give them half of your health so healing someone becomes a choice between how much health you want and how much you need that other players gun.

 

The level design in the game is fairly monotonous. You will usually find yourself in either a city scape (which is fun to destroy), underground tunnels, a beach front or hilly meadows. Once again I was able to look past this because the level design isn’t really the focus of the game.

 

All and all Earth Defense Force 2025 should never have made it to stores. The graphics are almost last generation in their appearance. Performance issues drag the game to a near stop and the complete lack of plot and the horrendous friendly AI should mean that this game is awful.

 

But its not. When played alone it is repetitive, overly difficult and somewhat boring. When you take the experience online or plug in another controller for split-screen the game really comes alive. EDF will never replace Call of Duty or Gears of war but if you want some over the top destruction, giant insects and more weapons that you can shake a stick at then EDF is for you.