Earth Defense Force 5 (PlayStation 4)

Earth Defense Force is my guiltiest of testosterone pleasures.  The whole series from the earliest game on PS2 to this most recent one on PS4 are objectively mediocre games, and they were originally designed to be budget titles.  But DAMN, is it ever fun to massacre entire swarms of 50 foot tall insects with huge rocket launchers.  It's like what would happen if SyFy ever hired me to make one of their crappy made-for-TV monster movies.  It's truly a thing of beauty.

The basic story in EDF - all of them, pretty much - is that giant insects appear and start destroying cities, marking the beginning of an alien invasion.  Then you, as a proud soldier of the Earth Defense Force, must bravely charge into battle with your weapon of choice, be it a sniper rifle, rocket launcher, shotgun, whatever, and use the blessing of unlimited ammo to massacre the invaders and keep those aliens out of our home!  WE'RE GONNA BUILD A GREAT, GREAT SPACE WALL, AND WE'RE GONNA MAKE THE ALIENS PAY FOR IT!  WITH BLOOD!  Literally nothing about this game takes itself seriously, and that's honestly its biggest strength.  It's absurdly ridiculous, and it embraces that whole heartedly from the ludicrous concept to the over the top voice acting.

Unfortunately for us Westerners, EDF5 is the first game in the series not to be released physically in North America since the series first debuted here.  You can get is on PSN for the normal $60, but if you want it physical, you've gotta import it.  Fortunately there's an Asia English version available, and at least when I pre-ordered it from Play-Asia back in November, it actually ended up being about $7 or $8 cheaper (once you factor in tax) even with the shipping.  Not sure why since I usually pay a premium for a physical import vs digital, but I'm not complaining.  Hell, I'd have paid an extra $20 to have it physical; Earth Defense Force is one of my obsessive-lunatic series alongside Legend of Zelda, Fire Emblem, and Army Men.

Earth Defense Force 5 is a really stupid game.  It's the same kind of stupid as when my friends and I duct taped a lawn chair to a skateboard, tied a rope to the back of a 4 wheeler and tied a handle to the other end, and had the 4 wheeler pull us like dry land redneck wakeboarding.  What I mean by that is that it's objectively stupid, but it's also objectively freaking amazing.  If you're into that kind of stupid, there are few games that will give you as good a time as Earth Defense Force, and this latest entry in the series on the PlayStation 4 performs better than any of its predecessors with the series' staple frame rate drops pretty much limited to heavy action scenes, and I didn't have the game outright crash on me a single time.  It looks great (given what series it is ), and it controls super well, too.  All in all, I don't have any complaints.  Normal people would probably have very few complaints.  With 110 levels, 5 difficulties, and multiplayer, too, there's a TON of content here to experience.

My Rating - 4 Neps