EDF! EDF! EDF!
Sometimes we all get a hankering for some mindless fun and that’s when the EDF series comes in handy. Those crazy cats in Japan created the Earth Defense Force series as a budget-priced third person shooter back in 2005 and now in 2016 Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow Of New Despair washes up on European shores courtesy of Sandlot and PQube Games. Not ones to sit on their laurels, the publishers also released Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders From Planet Space on the PS Vita the same day.
Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow Of New Despair is an enhanced PS4 port of Earth Defense Force 2025, and the basic plot is: an alien race that the EDF team previously defeated is back for Round Two. This sounds like the plot of just about every other B-movie and that’s because this is where EDF gets its inspiration. So get ready for some ropey dialogue, a slightly dodgy plot and a ridiculous amount of OTT enemies.
Speaking of enemies there is a large number of them to destroy in Earth Defense Force 4.1 and the first you will encounter are insects. All the insects follow the same criteria whether it’s the ant, spiders or bees; they are all giant and buggy. They are like the grunt soldiers, but there are loads of other enemies also lining up to take a pot-shot at you and they include fire breathing dragons, flying drones, a giant humanoid robot (that looks like a pimped-up version of ED209), spaceships, battleships, motherships, three legged walking war machines (that could have stepped off the original War of the World) and even a mysterious monster that has appeared from the sea known as Erginus.
So it’s down to the EDF team to wipe out these invaders from space. This team consists of four different classes of soldier: Ranger (standard soldier), Wing Diver (flying soldier), Air Raider (support soldier), and Fencer (heavily-armoured juggernaut soldier armed with a powerful melee weapon, a shield and an huge OTT weapon). Instead of just giving you access to the vast array of weapons in Earth Defense Force 4.1 the game opts for a loot system. Enemies will randomly drop health, armour and weapons. It is wise to collect all of these when you are playing and a good tip is to leave one final enemy alive so you can collect all the drops.
Normally with the EDF games you’d expect the look to be, how shall I put it, below par? But Earth Defense Force 4.1 is not only graphically superior to its little brother EDF2 on the PS Vita it is visually the best EDF game of the series. Don’t believe me?
Take a rocket launcher to an office block and watch that building crumble! Or take a moment to enjoy the splattering of the bug’s red claret on screen. Doesn’t it look glorious? All the details look crystal clear no matter if you are doing the grunt work at ground
Review - ps4
BY nelmano
44