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Categories: Review
Tags: action, aliens, shooter, xbox 360
Earth Defense Force 2017
Developer: Sandlot
Publisher: D3 Publisher
Platform: Xbox 360
Released: 3/20/2007
The Earth Defense Force (EDF) has been formed to fight The Ravagers, an alien race intent on destroying the Earth. Over the course of fifty plus levels, The Ravagers take the form of giant ants, spiders, towering robots, cyborg-dinosaurs, and oversized UFOs. Played from a third-person perspective, this shooter pits the player (or players; the game offers 2-player offline co-op) against wave after wave of aliens, often filling the screen with antennae and shiny extraterrestrial hardware.
Here’s my immediate impressions from level one, a level which finds the player confronting an army of giant ants: Fellow EDF members are laughably inefficient and chant “EDF!” repeatedly. The player causes more damage than the ants—many of the weapons in the game are explosive and landscapes are quickly leveled. The game has no recognizable physics. Everything disappears when it is destroyed. And killing an army of giant ants is insanely fun.
Fun is probably the biggest attribute this game has going for it. Unlike story-driven shooters or modern action games with adventure/RPG elements, EDF is a straightforward shooter and the bite size levels allow the player to play as much or as little as they want to. In other words, it’s enjoyable, but not a timesink.
Beyond this, EDF excels at presenting a sense of scale. The game either throws tons of aliens at you or simply dwarfs you with huge alien ships or walking weapons platforms. Plus, for as graphically generic as the game is, aliens ooze an appealing amount of goo and things blow up real good!
If this game has any problems (I mean real problems), it’s the severe amount of repetition. There are over fifty levels which use the same handful of maps (the city, the beach, the tunnels) over and over again. The only mission objective is to clear the map of enemies and the enemies get progressively harder, but it feels like towards the end of the game the designers were just pulling monsters out of a hat: okay we have the black ants that spit acid, spiders, and the UFOs.
Where there is variety is in the huge amount of weaponry: assault rifles, shotguns, missiles, rocket launchers, sniper rifles and special weapons. Enemies drop power-ups when they are killed increasing armor, restoring health, and adding weapons to the stockpile. There are also tanks, mech suits, helocopters, and swoopbikes to be found, although they control poorly and are usually ineffective.
The way you feel about Godzilla movies is probably a good indicator of how you’ll feel about Earth Defense Force 2017. If you don’t mind giant monsters stumbling around fake looking cities being attacked by inefficient troops, then Earth Defense Force 2017 is the game for you. On the other hand, if you think B-movie equals bad movie, then pass this one up.