When a series has an impact on you as a player, it’s usually because of something deep, or moving, impactful in a way you never imagined possible. The twist in Bioshock. Leaving the Vault in Fallout 3. The Last of Us’ sudden, shocking ending. You really wouldn’t expect the same level of reverence to apply to a cheap-and-cheerful series of games where you shoot giant ants, fire rocket launchers at UFOs and destroy entire cities for no real reason other than because you can.
And yet, Earth Defence Force has a committed, dedicated cult following. These games are big, dumb fun in the most straightforward way, and they’re basically the reason I have a fondness for the term ‘brain-off entertainment’. Why, with all the wonderful and delightful and thoroughly lovely games out there – games that have something to say, series that actually make real progress from iteration to iteration – do I remain obsessed with the Earth Defence Force series?
Earth Defence Force 4.1’s release last month marks the latest in a lineage stretching back over a decade, the latest in a long line of games that have changed very little over time, yet have (generally) been loved just as much as ever. There’s a simple way to show how little has moved in the world of these games: the menus haven’t changed much over the years. A decade’s worth of games, boiled down to four static images of menus that look like they were made by accident in 1992. Brilliant.
It’s not just the menus that stay forever the same – rolling is a constant through every giant insect-slaying jaunt, even the especially rubbish Insect Armageddon:
You know when people say ‘it’s just the same game again’? A lot of the time it’s similar, not the same. It’s an exaggeration, often born of frustration. In EDF, it’s absolute truth. The game has changed so very little since its inception, it borders on criminal.
But when what you’re doing from day one is this:
It tends not to matter too much.
Back in 2004, it would have been odd for a very Japanese budget release to see a full, boxed version heading to Europe. And yet, Monster Attack did land on our shores – and not in the US – all those years ago. I remember word getting around on forums of this mad bastard of a game – that it was absolutely nonsensical, generally rubbish, but it ramped up the Dicking About levels to critical. You were a dude who ran about gunning down giant ants and UFOs, sometimes in a vehicle, and always destroying every building in your way without penalty.
I was immediately whisked back to my childhood, standing in the playground with friends discussing what the ‘best’ computer game would feature. I was brought back there because the description of Monster Attack was everything we’d ever wanted when we were kids. It was the game of my childhood dreams.
The sordid affair continued with the PS2 follow up Global Defense Force, hitting in 2006. The same year as the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The same year as Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. The same year as Hitman: Blood Money.
Global Defense Force did not fit in 2006.
But I lapped it up all over again. And why not? EDF never tries to be anything more than what it was first time around, just with a few different abilities and weapons thrown in. The sheer catharsis of annihilating hundreds – nay, thousands – of mindless insects continued to carry it, and would continue to carry it through to the next generation.
In 2007 we got Earth Defence Force 2017 – the first EDF of the 360/PS3 generation and, bizarrely, the first of the series to actually get a release in North America. Apparently nobody thought the Yanks would enjoy idiotically blowing things up before, which seems an oversight on someone’s part.
Earth Defence Force 2017 also ratcheted things up on the adorable rubbishness front, with the advent of voiced characters. I haven’t laughed as much in any game as I did when one young soldier, fresh on a mission to a subterranean ants’ nest filled with hundreds of 20 metre tall insects, exclaimed “I’m on an exciting underground adventure!”
That stupidity was key to the earlier games’ success, in my eyes. Maybe partly due to translation, definitely partly down to a lack of budget, there was always a glorious B-movie feel to the games while you were busy gunning down gigantors by the thousand. And that’s why EDF 2017 was, relatively speaking, popular.
And that’s why we got Earth Defence Force: Insect Armageddon in 2011. Wrenched from its creators Sandlot and handed to US studio Vicious Cycle, the new game would have, shock, production values! Menus, mission structures and multiplayer that all made sense! Other stuff!
It also had manlier-than-manly soldiers saying things like “tango down”, irritating hyper-military phrases and a general feel of Call of Duty about it. Insect Armageddon tried, I’ll give it that, but the game lost a hell of a lot of the magic: it didn’t feel overwhelming, it didn’t feel cheap enough and it absolutely missed the mark by intentionally trying to be funny.
It’s actually good that the US-made game came out, when you think about it, because it showed those of us who were fans of the series that there was something redeeming about the prior releases. We weren’t just being obtuse and liking something because it was cheap and nasty – we fell in love with its sheer passion. Oh, and the feeling of being consistently overwhelmed by armies of insects, spiders, hornets, UFOs, giant robots called Hector (not joking) and a one-hit-kill mothership that still pisses me off to this day.
As if to double-down on that vindication, EDF’s next release in 2014 – Earth Defence Force 2025 – was back in the hands of Sandlot and back to doing what we know and love: being big, dumb fun of the best kind.
EDF 2025 retained classes – one of the few good things Insect Armageddon brought to the … insect … armageddon, but brought them back in the style of the older games. Meaning: Wing Divers! Or Pale Wings, whatever they want to be called. An all-female battalion of jetpack troops (in ludicrously short skirts, natch), they were great in GDF but hadn’t been around since. You could boost really high up in the sky before raining down white-hot plasma death on a quiet residential area below, razing all of the buildings to the ground and making some formerly alive giant spiders a bit more dead.
Earth Defence Force 4.1 – a stupid title given previous naming conventions, thus immediately showing itself as a true heir to the EDF throne – is the first step of hopefully many for the series on the PS4 generation. It’s not the first time it’s been spoken of in semi-reverent tones on these pages, so I won’t prattle on too much about it. Save to say that the ability to play online with a team of three other players – once you’ve wrestled through a menu system that was truly designed by a fool (honestly, the analogue stick navigates options while the digital pad selects emotes, in a menu) – makes EDF 4.1 one of the best things in the world today, for me.
The fact you have an EDF anthem you can all sing a verse each of is just… sublime. Yes, the giant ants and spiders and Godzilla-like monsters and all that good stuff is present and accounted for, but how many games out there let you sing an army’s anthem together while flying around in a jetpack and razing an entire city to the ground?
And that’s just it: it’s as simple as they come, born from the Simple series of budget games in Japan, the kind of base level idea that anybody could come up with and the sort of thing that takes no time to explain in its entirety a newcomer. Get guns. Shoot ants. Repeat
But there’s nothing else like Earth Defence Force. Nothing at all. Long may it continue, long may it reign, and long may we all be chanting “EDF! EDF! EDF!”
This post originally appeared on Kotaku UK, bringing you original reporting, game culture and humour from the British isles.
Comments
13 responses to “A Tribute to the Best, Most Godawful Games Ever Made”
methinks someone should do for EDF as Stardew Valley did for Harvest Moon – if we never get any of the real EDF games on PC then at least a mod-friendly ripoff which takes advantage of Steam’s indie development community
despite IA providing some amusement, its switch to grinding and damage-soaking enemies didn’t supply any of the memorable moments like filling an underground nest with bouncing rifle bullets or sending ants into orbit like they encountered a Skyrim giant… or in co-op when we watched a really slow homing missile politely turn down a street between two buildings instead of exploding them
I’ve never understood the whole “so bad it’s good” mentality. When most people have a pile of shame (of good games) taller than they are, who has time for mediocrity? SMH
The trick is to always have low expectations, then no game is ever mediocre.
It isn’t bad, it is mindless.
Kinda how sometimes it is nice to sit and play a match 3 game. Is it the best game in your library? No. But sometimes you don’t want aything involved, you don’t want a challenge or in depth story.
You just want to switch off and shoot some bugs or match some gems
it’s like why people keep doing remakes and variations on old arcade games – sometimes you want the complex combat and 100 hour epic of The Witcher, and sometimes you want to hold an auto-fire button and smash monster generators in Gauntlet – ‘fast food gaming’ as it were 🙂
The “good” part comes from the comedy value. It’s hilariously bad and so becomes good in that sense
Seems like you don’t want to understand. It’s simply that different things bring different people enjoyment, some people like to allow all kinds of experiences to be enjoyable, others like to restrict it to a narrow and illegitimate definition of “good”. Is a game good when it’s creative? When it runs well? When it has tight controls? A strong story? How do you even define what any of this is for everyone? What about fun? I’m more wierded out by the way people seem to be able to define and categorise games so easily without considering the breadth of experiences available.
I love EDF, currently playing through EDF4 on PS3 with my daughter.
Why no Xbox love with 4.1 though? The 360 version of EDF4/2025 was far superior to the PS3 version (I couldn’t wait and PS3 was region free), would gladly snap up 4.1 but won’t be buying a new console for it 🙁
Yeah, I’ve grabbed quite a few EDFs, and the 360’s 2025 was probably the best I can remember.
I played EDF 4.1 for several weeks straight. I’ve got about 14% completion rate, and I absolutely adore it.
I wish people would stop saying it’s “so bad it’s good”. It’s not. It’s just plain good. Even great. Especially the later levels, with monumental robots, including a star destroyer sized thing that transforms into a robot so tall that sky scrapers only come to its belly button if it had one, and walking tripod robots with targetable body parts. All the while AI soldiers and tanks rolling by, spouting outrageous nonsense.
Yes, the production values aren’t great, sure, but they’re passable. But the “so bad it’s good” should read “so cheesy it’s good”. It’s giant insects from honey I shrunk the kids, the tripods from war of the worlds, robots from 50s sci fi shows.
And the dialogue is atrocious, but I think it’s knowingly atrocious, because it’s still in the style of pulp 50s sci fi and delivered in exactly that way. They sound like they’re delivering lines on an old War of the Worlds radio play.
It might seem simple, but a person with more skill can definitely make more progress. The coop is excellent, and harder missions really rely on people performing their class roles well (air raiders are invaluable support, wing divers are invaluable at taking out priority targets, etc).
Not to mention the fact that it has an extensive d-pad communications menu which basically allows you to communicate with any player in the world in their own language. There are like 6 different ways to yell “EDF!” and “EDF! EDF!” with different emphasis, and a complete battlemarch song where you can select different verses, so you’re coop partners can sing the next part if the AI soldiers don’t.
IT’S GREAT! I’ve had more fun with it than The Division, in all honesty.
I encourage people to pick it up. Go straight online. There are 98 coop-able missions, and very few of them feel repetitive.
Ah, EDF 2017. Had it on the 360. Fantastic game. I wouldn’t say “brain-off”, I just loved the combination of large enemy waves, big maps, destruction and weapons. I pretty much figured out the best weapon combo’s.
Maybe I should give it a try
I’ve never gotten the ‘so bad, it’s good’ thing with EDF. The only thing questionable in the games are the production values. I guess anyways, because what EDF lacked in amazing graphics, it made up for in sheer destruction and scale – I’ve always found the graphics quite awe-inspiring. Everything just seems so huge, and watching the city areas collapse under the weight of your firepower was brilliant.
Apart from the production values, the core of the game has always been incredibly solid. It plays well, the controls are perfect and the sound design is fantastic. The gameplay loop is bang-on too – Sandlot know what they’re doing, that’s for sure.
I’m hoping this comes out on Xbox One soon… if not, I know I’m going to have to splurge on a PS4 to complete my current-gen console collection. Tried Drive Club recently, and it took me back to my Metropolis Street Racer and PGR days, so it’s a must have for me. And now, between EDF 4.1 and Shadow of the Beast, I need me a PS4 🙂