Platform: Playstation Vita

Developer: Sandlot

Publisher: XSEED Games

Rated: T

Release Date: December 8th, 2015

A review copy of the was provided by XSEED Games

Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders From Planet Space is a 3rd person shooter and is a remake of the original Earth Defense Force 2 (aka Global Defense Force in Europe) on the PlayStation 2 and is developed by Sandlot.

Just another day in the year 2019

EDF2 starts off with a back drop of the previous entry when the “Gigantors” attacked Earth and the Earth Defense Force assembled to defend it and, ultimately, defeated them. A year has passed and now Earth is faced with several new threats – the “Buggernaughts” (essentially GIANT bugs), Aliens in their UFOs and their war machines, and of course, a Godzilla-like creature. As far as story goes, that’s about it. The story is told with your battles with against these creatures. Before the battle, when you choose a mission you read the debriefing which lets you know what’s happening in the mission, and, as the mission goes on, you might hear fellow soldiers getting killed off or a news report on the current situation. Other than that, there aren’t really cut-scenes, you normally just jump right into the mission.

In these missions there are 3 different characters you can play as. An Infantryman whose weapons consist of your typical guns, grenades, and rockets. There’s the Pale Wing that has a jet-pack that allows you to fly around for a limited amount of time by using a self-recharging energy tank. Their weapons mainly revolve around weapons from that same pool of energy so it would be best to be extremely mindful about how much your shooting in case you get surrounded so you can fly away. Lastly, there are the Air Raiders. The Air Raiders bring a lot more strategic game play as they don’t necessarily attack directly. Instead, their attacks range from setting up turrets to actually calling down air strikes. Both the Infantrymen and the Air Raiders can pilot vehicles on the map like tanks or helicopters.

Don’t worry about bullets. You have infinite ammo. Just spray and pray.

Now, I’ll be honest here. This game is both very fun, but very, very frustrating at the same time. Not to say that, that’s a bad thing. The game itself feels great and fun to play. The problem is that there are so many enemies coming after you that it’s incredibly easy to get overwhelmed and just flat out die in seconds because everyone is attacking you at once with no room to breathe. This especially applies to missions where the enemies are the spiders. Everything else isn’t as much as an annoyance as them. When you get hit by their web, you slow down. But this effect just piles, you can get hit again by a different web that will slow you down even further, and you can eventually just get sprayed to death because you’ve essentially been covered by their webbing. Honestly speaking, when all is said and done and you finally beat the mission you might be having trouble with, you don’t feel accomplished, but instead a sigh of relief as you hope you don’t have a similar mission in the future.

You know, I always considered spiders my friends. But then this game came along.

Thankfully, you can partner up on these missions if you feel if you’re having trouble. Or, alternatively, you can all go against each other in a 4 player rumble. Best part is, from what I’ve seen, the online doesn’t necessarily lag either. Although I will say that at one point, for some reason I disconnected from the person I was playing with and didn’t notice as the game didn’t tell me. It resulted in some weird bug where my [then disconnected] partner and all of the enemies stopped doing what they were doing and then began just run in an aimless direction as if they’re trying to go beyond the edge of the map. Even when all of the enemies were defeated, I didn’t get a “mission complete” screen either so it took a while to notice that a new wave of enemies wasn’t going to show up and something was wrong.

Dodging is incredibly important. As there’s something coming from every direction.

Graphically, this is definitely far from the best looking thing I’ve seen on this system. Although, between rendering all of those enemies, keeping the framerate steady (although when it drops, it DROPS), the big maps, and the highly destructive environment, it’s plain as day to see why the graphics are the way they are. Which is something I’d prefer. A good game that looks bad is much better than a bad game that looks good by any means.

At the end of the day, this game feels very much like a B-rated movie. Everything about it feels very low budget and seems like a joke. However, that really works in the game’s favor. Even without the multiplayer segment, this game will keep you playing for a very long time. 78 missions? 3 ways to play? 6 Difficulty levels? You’ll be playing this forever. Plus the Inferno difficulty makes it very easy to kill you, and extremely hard to kill the opponents so you’re provided a healthy challenge as well. 

7/10

+Multiplayer is a ton of fun

+Tons of replayability

-There are too many enemies for them to all be aggressive towards you