Playing Earth Defense Force 2025 made me think of watching Mystery Science Theater 3000. The movies on that show were bad in so many ways – script, acting, visuals and special effects. But somehow that one element – the silly, uproarious commentary made by the smartass fellas – made it enjoyable to sit on your couch and watch a movie with extremely low production values. Earth Defense Force 2025 has spectacularly bad graphics, a script full of mindless dialogue and totally dreadful voice acting. But that one quality component it does have, good third-person shooting gameplay, can let you overlook the lesser attributes everywhere else and have an unexpectedly entertaining time.Now, it's pretty apparent that the developers purposely decided to "camp" up the B-movie story and voice acting. Or at least, I really hope they did it purposely, because it is atrociously campy with especially terrible voice acting. Old-school Resident Evil or House of the Dead terrible. Even worse are the 2000-wants-its-graphics-back visuals, which are just embarrassingly dreadful. But it seems the developers aren't concerned with the silliness of the story, the crappy voice acting and eye-straining visuals. They only want to give gamers a fun shooter. And they have, which is why the original title already is a cult gaming classic and Earth Defense Force 2025 is destined to be also.
As a sequel to Earth Defense Force 2017, the storyline is essentially the same. The countries of Earth formed a collective military force, Earth Defense Force, when it was discovered that an alien "meet & greet" was imminent just in case the aliens proved to be hostile, which of course they did. The Ravagers race of insect-style aliens (ant, spider and bee-like Ravagers most prominently), rather humongous insect-like aliens, along with their accompanying technological fire-power of spacecraft and robots, decided to start a fight with humanity; they lost and were defeated. However, eight years later, a secret Ravagers nest underground in Arizona has spawned another planetary threat, and once more the EDF is tasked with eradicating them. It really is as campy as it sounds.
Unlike the single-class EDF from the previous EDF title from Sandlot, this time there are four classes to choose from: Ranger, Air Raider, Wing Diver and the Fencer. Each has its defined attributes, with the Ranger the default class all the way to the Fencer, which is essentially a tank, heavily armored but slow and plodding. Vehicles can be deployed with the Air Raider class, but most are frustratingly difficult to drive.
Even more frustrating is the fact that selecting which class and which respective weaponry can be nothing more than a "trial by fire" approach. Most missions that end in failure are because a player has the wrong class, or even worse, the wrong weaponry, which oftentimes won't be known until the very last phase of that mission. Some enemies will require specific weaponry to be used, and if you choose wrongly at the initiation of the mission it's, unfortunately, "restart mission" time. But when you have the correct class, weapon selection, and strategy, Earth Defense Force 2025 boosts past the campiness of the story and awful voice acting with solid third-person shooting entertainment. Annihilating big bug after big bug and giant robot after giant robot in an almost-completely destructible environment is
gratifying, even more so with online play.
It's not trying to be a Game of the Year candidate. Earth Defense Force 2025 is only looking to appeal to the simple charm of being pure flawed-but-we-the-developers-don't-care-it's-still-fun third-person shooting gaming entertainment with a campy, B-movie presentation. And it certainly succeeds.– Lee Cieniawa
The Good:
– Despite so many laughably bad presentation features, the entertaining shooting and "kill big things" gameplay more than atones
The Bad:
– Absolutely awful graphics, bad dialogue and equally bad accompanying voice acting
– Selecting the right soldier class and weaponry for each level is left to a "trial by fire" approach that can be frustrating when you reach the end of a level and realize that you should have chosen another soldier or weapon
