QCF: Earth Defense Force 2025

andlot and D3 Publisher are back with Earth Defense Force 2025, the latest installment of the ever-popular, cult-classic series and direct sequel to 2007's Earth Defense Force 2017. Like its predecessor and its in-betweener installment Insect Armageddon (by Vicious Cycle in 2011), EDF 2025 features everything you want out of an EDF title—hordes of giant ants. Skyscraper-sized spiders that can make a grown man weep, or how about gargantuan Ravager robots that can lay waste to entire cities just by walking; the only thing that can keep these monstrosities from annihilating mankind? The Earth Defense Force, that’s who!

Earth Defense Force 2025 is a third-person shooting game that emphasizes risk-reward throughout its many, many stages. Movement is, as you would expect, with a twin-stick movement /aiming system that most players will feel right at home with, especially having played any of the previous titles. However, EDF 2025 offers player the choice of four classes, each with their own specific weapon types and control schemes. Rangers are great for novices with overall balanced armor, weapons and movement. Wing Divers and Air raiders offer neat alternatives for close support and fencers are hulking juggernauts with immense firepower but slower movement and difficult controls for expert EDF soldiers. Finding what class is right for you can take a while, but with the plethora of stages in EDF 2025, there's plenty of room to explore. This is where EDF 2025's Risk/reward comes into play.

Right from the get-go, players have access to every difficulty level ranging from the novice-friendly Easy to the epically difficult Inferno to challenge themselves right from stage 1. Getting through each stage can be pretty easy, but the payoff will suffer, depending on the difficulty. Enemies will drop one of three item pickups; Armor, Health and Weapons. Only Health is instantly usable, while armor and Weapons are acquired after stage end.

Depending on the difficulty, Weapon pickups will be better or worse. Getting through easy is fine and all, but you'll only ever get the lowest-level weapons, typically at Level Zero. Inferno, on the other hand, yields weapon levels up to 50. every weapon pickup is random, so you never know what you'll get until the stage is over. This lends to EDF 2025's replayability. Playing on Hard gives a great challenge, but weapon-grinding on Inferno can get you some serious firepower to make the going just a bit easier. It all really depends on each person's play style. To that end, EDF 2025 is perhaps one of the most accommodating games there is for someone to just jump in and wreak some awesome bug-killing havoc.

Oh man, can you wreak some real havoc. All of the environments in EDF 2025 are fully destructible, given the right amount of firepower. Buildings will crumble as you chase down your opposition with missiles, grenades and high-powered rifles in tow. And it's even more fun with friends. EDF 2025 supports 2-player local and 6-player online Multiplayer, which is perfect for using some of the more exotic classes. You can even heal teammates with special weapons and revive fallen players at the cost of half your health. With so many targets and methods of death, Multiplayer is great fun... but care should be used, since if you stand too close to an explosive weapon's business or get hit by an allie's heavy weaponry, the end result could kill you faster than any Ravager.

It's all great fun, but it's not without problems. The framerate will often dip sharply to a crawl when the action gets too intense, especially in two-player split-screen. This can be fairly problematic, especially when you're being overrun by a horde of hungry giant bugs, but it also gives the game a bit of an iffy first impression, since the beginning of most stages crawl along at far too slow a speed. Single player is more than solid enough, though there are spots that have an obviously uncharacteristic high or low framerate, depending what's onscreen.

The overall presentation make up for this though, with some pretty cool monster and mechanical design overall. The ants will make your skin crawl and spiders will make you shudder as they scurry all over the cityscape. The destructible environments are also pretty freaking huge, with a decent amount of detail that makes it feel as if it's more than just a set piece destined for destruction. Giant robots and huge spacecraft explode with satisfyingly huge plumes of flame and 9.0 Richter Scale screen shake. The music is also suitably great with fantastic in-game scores and one of the better Title themes I've heard in quite a while. The voice clips also have just the right amount of cheese that keeps EDF 2025 from taking itself too seriously. There's just nothing like having your squad mates cheering “EDF! EDF!!” or sing little ditties as they turn a massive wall of giant spiders into paste.

As far as action games go, you'll be hard-pressed to find as much content in a single game than Earth Defense Force 2025. Hundreds of weapons, four distinct classes and an overwhelming amount of stages with five difficulties married with collect-em-all randomized pickups makes for a really addictive experience that's marred only slightly by some poor optimization. But, overall, it's a game that you need if any of what I've written here so far has even interested you just a bit. Earth Defense Force 2025 is available now on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.