Jul 22 2011

EDF

There are two reasons to get Earth Defence Force: Insect Armageddon.

The first is taking on fifty or a hundred things larger than you, each of which will take half a clip or a few clips to dispose of. All of them advancing at such a pace, you’re forced to retreat while firing wildly into the crowd and hope you don’t run out of room to backpedal until they’re worn down enough to make it a remotely fair fight.

The second reason is, after minutes of dodging and frantic salvos of gunfire… winning that fight.

EDF:IA isn’t a particularly sophisticated game. Hundreds of ants – or spiders, or flying robots, or wasps, or whatever – run at you. You try to not die. Occasionally there’s a giant robot with them, or you’re given a mech, but the principle is that you’re given city-levelling weaponry and then set against an enemy force epic enough to laugh at that weaponry.

It has two player split-screen co-op and three player online co-op. It’s also fairly cheap, as games go. It doesn’t seem like it’s got the same grindy, levelling-up endurance as its predecessor EDF 2017. But then I’m not sure I have the patience to collect over 6000 armour drops again before I can survive the last level of Inferno, either, or hunt that last exclusive weapon with a less-than-1% drop rate. So maybe that’s a good thing.

Eurogamer’s review here.