When it was released in 2007, Earth Defense Force 2017 walked a precarious line between a kitschy gag and genuine entertainment. Its visual presentation and general gameplay loop were a decade behind any of its peers and yet nothing compared to its cocksure delivery of repetitive and mediocre content. You destroyed endless hoards of giant bugs and space aliens with assault rifles and leveled massive cities with rocket launchers. Between its chaotic loot grind and split-screen cooperative experience, Earth Defense Force 2017 legitimately qualified as good time. It was the Xbox 360’s sole equivalent of sincerely enjoying a b-movie at a drive-in.
Six years later, when Earth Defense Force 2017 found a new home on the PlayStation Vita, I compared it to attending a gun safety course only to see the instructor non-fatally shoot his own hand off. It was fun in spite of itself. There was some merit behind the idea of providing a classic EDF game to a new audience on a different platform, but an absurd price-tag and reluctance to introduce meaningful content swamped its appeal.
2014 saw the release of Earth Defense Force 2025, the first legitimate sequel to Earth Defense Force 2017. I found it to be a confident reissue of Earth Defense Force 2017, which, again, wouldn’t have been a problem had I not already explored Earth Defense Force 2017 on two different occasions. Whether they know it or not, the development team at Sandlot keeps making the same game over and over again. A cynical approach could point to Assassin’s Creed, Call of Duty,or virtually any other money-printing videogame machine and ask why Earth Defense Force doesn’t get a pass. The answer is in its nature; it’s built to be appreciably dumb and broken, and that’s a trick that only has a positive effect one time.
For its part, Earth Defense Force 2025 was more willing to introduce additional teeth to EDF’s crumbling veneers. It spread play styles between four different classes, but while Wing Diver’s aerial approach was an exciting change of pace, the Air Raider and Fencer were relegated to supporting roles. Less impressive were Earth Defense Force 2025’s new enemy contributions, like alien sentries that could create shield barriers or massive void ships that, really, performed the same duty as the usual alien carriers. Like the enemies of old, they’re tossed out en masse with little regard for a proper challenge.
The remainder of Earth Defense Force 2025 felt identical to Earth Defense Force 2017. You scoured across deserted cityscapes or black-out underground tunnels in the name of annihilating the enemy threat. Black ants spewed acid, hornets deployed stingers, and spiders shot lasso-like webs. Later, alien aircraft assaulted you from above or deployed hectors, massive walking robots, to overwhelming the player with superior firepower. Vanquished foes sometimes exploded into armor upgrades (which cumulatively raised your health) or new weapons, the effectiveness of which was reflected in your chosen difficulty. Earth Defense Force 2025 then remixed the same idea across nearly a hundred levels.
It may seem like I’m taking a while to get to Earth Defense Force 4.1 but I’m actually not because it’s really the same game as Earth Defense Force 2025. Material that has accompanied press releases about Earth Defense Force 4.1 presents it as a “complete reimagining” of Earth Defense Force 2025 with different enemy load-outs and a smoother frame rate. I don’t think either of those things are true. The missions have the same names and same challenges as in Earth Defense Force 2025, and the frame-rate, while smoother than it was before, still reliably drops when activity consumes the screen.
Earth Defense Force 4.1 is the same game as Earth Defense Force 2025, and I played all of it over again. I did this partly because it’s expected when you’re reviewing a commercial product in an objectively professional capacity. I also did this because of one additional feature crammed into Earth Defense Force 4.1; the promise of giant mecha-versus-kaiju battles. This is the game’s selling point, and after Godzilla’s disappointing performance last summer, I was ready for a modern game to act on the urges of Pacific Rim. With Incognito’s War of the Monsters and SNK’s King of the Monsters, there have been exactly two “good” monster fighting games. Earth Defense Force, of all active videogame properties, seemed like a suitable air to this coveted throne.
The monster fighting in Earth Defense Force 4.1 is terrible. It’s rote, sluggish, and thoroughly unsatisfying. You take control of giant, building-sized mech and are granted the ability to engage molasses punches on a fairly agile giant monster. Sometimes you connect with wishful hits and the monster, Erginus, falls over. More often the monster will mow you down, which takes forever, and you have to get back up, which also takes forever. Toward the end of this battle I was slowly covered in ants until my health drained and my mighty robot exploded. I finished Erginus off by firing rockets at it on the ground while it (probably) couldn’t see me.
The offense is slightly more egregious based on the amount of time this event is teased out. Giant monster fighting missions, which are technically new to the game, are sandwiched between existing missions. On mission 27 for example, I saw the Erginus, but my weapons were deemed ineffective and it ran away. The same thing happened the next time I saw it on mission 39. I didn’t actually get to battle the monster until mission 53—a solid ten hours in—at which point I was justifiably upset with the considerable amount of time it had taken to reveal Earth Defense Force 4.1 ‘ s signature. I had already played this game, the same game, which was being presented as a noticeably different game. Earth Defense Force 4.1 has a different name and it’s on newer hardware but it is not a different game. I cannot be clearer about this.
Let it be stated the frame-rate is, at the very least, more consistent. The lighting effects applied to the tunnel stages are also nice. The sense of scale and ability to demolish giant hoards of anything, an effect retained from Earth Defense Force 2017, remains impressive. Everything else is a disaster that is perpetually unnoticed by the development team. You’ll frequently be so engulfed in giant insects it will be impossible to see the screen. Your AI companions excel at dying, firing their weapons into walls, and running into and/or against hills they cannot climb. Same with the tanks they drive. Earth Defense Force 4.1 is declaration that the development team has no impetus (or budget) for improvement and they’re cool with repeatedly turning in the same homework with the same wrong answers. Imagine you’re the teacher who has already figured this out and this will become annoying.
There is an ideal scenario and an idea consumer for Earth Defense Force 4.1 and I mean none of this cynically. As the name shift from Earth Defense Force 2025 to Earth Defense Force 4.1 implies, this game is for people new to the series. If this is your first EDF game and if you’ve got a buddy or two to play with either split-screen or online, Earth Defense Force 4.1 is going to be a lot of fun. By virtue of its core being relatively unchanged, it soldiers on as a defensible way to have a good time.
I greatly enjoyed my time with Earth Defense Force 2017 nearly a decade ago, but returns diminish with each new entry. As a human being enduring the same content over and over and as a person fortunate enough to write game reviews, I can’t give Earth Defense Force 4.1 a pass. Like the best magic tricks, it’s astounding the first time you see it, but a waste of everyone’s time when the performer can’t figure out how to move on.
