Also available on PlayStation 4 and Windows Earth Defense Force is one of my all-time favorite series. If you've played any of the games, then you know exactly what you're getting here - bad frame rate, sub-par visuals, gloriously horrible voice acting, and thousands upon thousands of giant insects to shoot. It's wonderful and the absolute epitome of "stupid, pointless fun." When I saw that one was coming to Switch, while I wasn't jazzed about the visual style chosen, I was VERY excited to have an entry in the series on my favorite of the current consoles. As you can probably tell from the Minecraft-esque blocky art style, this is a very light-hearted and often tongue-in-cheek entry in the series. With the exceptions of Insect Armageddon and Iron Rain, none of the games took themselves too too seriously, but this one is pretty up front with the fact that it's not serious. You've got one character who routinely breaks the fourth wall and talks about the script and the game developers and even name drops other games in the series (think the archery contest scene from Robin Hood: Men in Tights); characters who run around in giant panda, koala, and bear costumes; a Twitch streamer character; and the fact that the Earth, sun, and moon are all cubes. No one's mistaking this for a serious game. That's part of the charm, though; the entire premise of the series is ridiculous, and instead of trying to make it more serious like they did to a certain extent with Iron Rain, they totally lean into the absurdity, and it totally works here. The general premise is that the various aliens from the other games in the series have all invaded Earth again under the command of the mysterious Dark Tyrant, and this time, they've managed to physically tear the Earth apart. Rather than render the chunks of the planet utterly lifeless as would actually happen, it just means that the EDF has to fight across different pieces of the broken Earth, destroying the Motherships to magically reassemble the planet. You can assemble a team of up to four units between whom you can switch freely, and while you start off with just a few units, there are three randomly generated units that you can find and rescue in each mission. If the rescued unit is one that you haven't found before, they're added to your roster; if it's one that you have found before, they gain skill points and, upon leveling up, gain the ability to use a new weapon type. This gives you a strong incentive to hunt down all of the units in need of rescue before finishing the mission. Some of these units are pulled straight from other games and even say (EDF3) or (EDF:IR) beside their names to denote their game of origin. Other units are based on hilarious (and borderline offensive at times) caricatures of their home countries. For example, the representative unit of Mexico is Amigo Brother, and he wears a giant sombrero, a colorful serape, and a guitar on his back; and his special attack is to throw bottles of tequila that act as Molotov cocktails with a special ability that has him pull out a trumpet and start playing to boost nearby allies' attack and defense. While I absolutely loved my time with it, I do have my complaints with the game. First off, I hate the visual style chosen, and I don't just mean the blocky look; there's this bizarre filter that they use that gives it a rather blurred look almost as if oil or something were smeared on the camera lens. I've seen gameplay of the PS4 and PC versions, and while the blur obviously isn't as severe with the higher resolutions on those platforms, the odd filter effect is still there. It's by no means a deal-breaker, and I was eventually able to look past it, but it's certainly not pleasing. I'm also not a fan of the not-infrequent performance hiccups. It never crashed on me, but it wasn't at all uncommon to see some pretty major (albeit thankfully momentary) frame rate dips at the start of missions and when the action got heavy. I'm also not a fan of the lack of any local multiplayer. I absolutely understand the limited system resources available, especially on Switch, but this type of game just seems perfect for some mindless Saturday afternoon couch co-op. Crack open a few beers (or, in my case, ciders), order a pizza, and slaughter some giant bugs. It does at least support local co-op via multiple Switch units, so that's something, but it's a shame that you can't do old-school split screen even if I understand that the Switch hardware probably would have made this a Herculean effort to pull off. Earth Defense Force: World Brothers certainly isn't a masterpiece of a game, and it's not even the best of the series, but it's definitely an extremely fun entry and a must-play for fans of the series or fans of goofy games and third person shooters. As long as you don't go in expecting a game with the budget or polish of a AAA studio and are cool with a dumb, silly story, there's a lot of fun to be had here. I hate the visual style they went with, and I wish it supported local co-op, but if you either have other friends with the game or are cool just slaughtering giant insects solo, this is a very enjoyable experience, and it's great to see this series finally grace a Nintendo platform with a release (even if it's not a main series game). My Rating - C |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
May 2024
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