Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

When you hear the words “budget title,” you expect a game that was made very cheaply and released to try to make a quick buck.  While budget titles sometimes scream “cheap,” there have been some exceptions.  Some of the more notable exceptions would be Katamari Damacy and Rockstar Presents Table Tennis.

Now budget titles start at $40, while in the previous generation they usually ran for $20-$30.  While $40 is better than paying the $60 for a regular game, it’s still a significant chunk of change.  Earth Defense Force 2017 (EDF2017) takes this approach to the market, but does that make the game more attractive to gamers?

In EDF2017, you play as a member of the Earth Defense Force.  You are a highly trained warrior that has been trained to fight against the alien swarm that is attacking the Earth, the last line of defense to save the planet.  Can you fight them off and save the world, or will the aliens devastate the planet?

The graphics in EDF2017 are definitely a step down from what we’ve seen from games like Gears of War or even Perfect Dark Zero.  You play in a third person perspective, so you see yourself as you battle the incoming aliens.  While there are some details, the textures on your uniform are bland.  The way you look, especially when running and with your torso turned, is awkward.  Running on screen is almost reminiscent of Enter the Matrix.  The other members of your team look just like you, so there really isn’t any emotional connection between them and your character.

The rest of the game looks just as bland.  There is a lot of pop in with the background graphics as buildings slowly appear from a mysterious fog.  The area lacks any kind of interaction with other people.  Maybe there was some kind of evacuation before the attack.  Spaceships hover over the city, but other than some nice lighting effects, they look rather gray and flat.  Most of the enemies that you face look like giant ants.  They scamper around, but they really don’t have many frames of animation.  After they die, they stay in the same stiff position until they magically disappear in front of you.  It’s something similar to the days of Double Dragon.

Power-ups in the game are available to increase your health or armor, or give you a new weapon to unlock after completing the mission successfully.  These power ups are completely flat and always look the same no matter what direction you are looking.  The Terminator: Future Shock had similar issues with objects in the game being like that, and it can be a bit disorienting.

EDF2017 does get a few things right.  Different weapons have different effects.  You can definitely see the difference between a shot gun, machine gun, and a rocket launcher.  The particle effects from each are very noticeable.  Also, when you shoot a building, the sense of scale of the building being destroyed is massive.  The blocks that the building breaks into are rather large and don’t have high polygon counts, but it does give you a sense of scale for the building.  Also, hitting an enemy with a rocket launcher, especially at close range, makes everything go flying.  While you aren’t going to be able to juggle enemies Painkiller style, it is fun to see enemies fly through the air every which way.  The green particle effect blood is a nice touch.

When you first load up the game and make your menu selections, you hear sounds like some kind of ‘80s arcade shooter.  The sound is loud and high-pitched, so you definitely know you have made some selection.

The weapons in the game have a slightly different noise to them, but there really isn’t that much to distinguish the weapon sounds.  The amount of oomph each weapon has sounds roughly the save, but there are enough nuances that you won’t confuse which weapon you are using at the time.

Your teammates constantly chatter while fighting off the waves of enemies.  Most of the time you don’t really have to pay any attention to them because what they say really isn’t important.  One might yell that they’re out of ammo, but you can’t do anything to help them.  Besides, you have unlimited ammo, so they just must not have come prepared for battle.  The dialogue is fun though, if you can handle how cheesy it is.

The controls are very basic, and anyone with any kind of console shooter experience should have no issues with the controls.  Using the left analog stick or the d-pad, you move and strafe.  The right analog stick handles aiming.  The left trigger jumps and rolls, while the right trigger is assigned to firing.  The right bumper switches weapons while the left bumper zooms.

There are a few vehicles in the game, and these control rather differently from the normal controls.  The controls make sense, and they will use the face buttons for firing.  Sometimes it can take a while to get used to switching gears so quickly.

EDF2017 reminded me a bit of the movie Starship Troopers.  In Starship Troopers you have a bunch of soldiers fighting against wave after wave of fast moving giant bugs.  EDF2017 has you fighting against wave after wave of giant ants, spiders, gunships, and dino-mechs.  The enemies can overwhelm you easily, especially on the higher difficulty levels.  Your teammates do a better job than some of the brain dead AI seen in other games, but your partners don’t always seem to do a good job at fighting the enemy.

Going into battle, you are given the option of two weapons that you can carry along with you.  As you progress through the game you can unlock more and more weapons.  With over 150 weapons, you can try out different combinations to your heart’s content.  It takes a while to find all of them.  Some weapons are better than others, and you are better off taking one short-range weapon and one long-range weapon.  Each weapon has a different reload time and a different amount of ammo it can hold in a clip.

The sense of scale of the enemies is enormous.  When they surround you, they tower over you.  Trying to get out from a swarm is dizzying.  The vehicles you enter are actually sized believably.  The robots that you fight later on are even bigger.  You really feel like you are fighting against a large enemy.  Ships that hover in the air are gigantic compared to the aliens they drop off.

You are sent as part of a squad.  Your teammates do help to clear out the enemies, but you really do most of the clean-up work yourself.  Completing the mission seems to be your responsibility and not anyone else’s.  Some of the immersion in the game is lost because of this.

As you kill enemies, they drop bonuses.  There are ones that restore your health.  Another bonus gives you a new weapon if you successfully complete the mission.  The last one upgrades the number of hit points you have for your next mission.  This becomes important in later levels because you won’t be able to complete the higher difficulty levels without increasing your weaponry and your hit points.

Before each mission you are given a short briefing to read.  You aren’t given any voice over as far as the mission objectives.  Even reading the briefing you don’t get a good idea of what the objective is.  Often the short cut scene before starting the mission gives you a better idea as far as the objective for the mission.

The game does get repetitive.  While you don’t get much of a mission briefing, your basic objective is to kill all of the enemies.  For some reason the repetitiveness of the game doesn’t hinder the fun you have.  It’s almost like a weird kind of addiction.  You want to play more to find out what the next swarm of enemies is going to have, and what weapon you can use to destroy them.

EDF2017 does allow for two-player cooperative play.  If you can get with a buddy to play this game, it can be a lot of fun, especially for those who are getting used to console shooters.  Unfortunately co-op play over Xbox Live isn’t supported.  You can also play against each other in a Battle Mode.  Here you can fight it out against each other using any weapons that have been unlocked in the story mode.  This mode is largely forgettable.

If you don’t have a buddy to play with, the single-player component has plenty of length.  53 missions are included with the game.  Before and after every mission a little video shows you what you are up against.  The missions themselves don’t take that long to perform.  You won’t finish EDF2017 very quickly, and for $40 it’s one of the better values out there.

EDF2017 also features five difficulty levels.  The first two difficulty levels are very easy, making the levels easy to complete on the first try.  The third difficulty level is challenging and the fourth and fifth are incredibly difficult.  You need to complete earlier missions on higher difficulty levels to be able to be successful at later missions.  If you want to get any Achievement Points, you have to complete each level at each difficulty level.  The developers were very lazy in assigning Achievement Points.

There are some elements of Earth Defense Force 2017 that are just plain bad.  That doesn’t mean that the developers didn’t put their heart into the game and that you can’t have some fun with it.  Don’t dismiss this game just because it is a budget title, it’s definitely got some hook to it.  If these guys had a bigger budget, this would be a hit.  While the “budget” price of the game isn’t that much lower than a full-priced game, it does represent a lot of gaming for your dollar.

Gaming Trend Score

74

1. Graphics: 66
2. Audio: 58
3. Controls: 85
4. Gameplay: 76
5. Value/Replay: 82
6. OVERALL:74