Why every gamer needs to play Earth Defense Force – Reader’s Feature

metro.co.uk:

A reader recommends everyone plays at least one entry in famed shlock shooter series Earth Defense Force, and he’s not wrong.

Earth Defense Force. It’s an overlooked series. And first impressions of it are terrible. But look at Steam or YouTube reviews and you will see nothing but love. It even appears in the fairly select PlayStation Hits line-up.

What’s going on? Let’s look at a typical playthrough. On starting a new game of EDF, it appears to be a very poor third person shooter. It looks like something from the PlayStation 2 era. There are no modern mechanics like firing from behind cover or recovering health over time. And the enemies just charge at you mindlessly. The first few missions are a mediocre experience, even with an open mind. If you upped the difficulty to try to make things more interesting, you will find it’s simply impossible.

Play past this initial impression and you might find that EDF is actually a twin-stick shooter. It’s a battle of attrition where you constantly struggle to land hits on the enemies while keeping distance and dodging attacks. It’s a lot of fun, and you can work your way to the end credits on easy difficulty, but some missions will still seem very difficult on normal difficulty – and the game has three more difficulty levels above that!

Here is where Earth Defense Force shines. If you have a swarm of enemies bearing down on you, you have already messed up. No amount of determination or reflexes is going to let you survive the deluge of acid and plasma being fired at you. The game shifts – how do you avoid getting to the point of being swarmed?

Strategy!

What loadout you pick for the mission. Where you choose to fight. What order you aggravate wandering enemies. Whether you defend or