Earth Defense Force 6
Developer: Sandlot
Publisher: D3 Publisher
Platforms: PlayStation 5, (Reviewed) PlayStation 4, PC
Release Date: Available Now
Price: $59.99 USD – Available Here
Overview
For every massive movie that focuses on top of the line special effects or huge names to try and draw in an audience, there are often countless other movies that people watch simply because of how absurd the premise or special effects end up being. These movies are often called B movies and are often full of schlocky fun that, despite the overall quality, makes for a good time. For over two decades the Earth Defense Force franchise has settled itself quite nicely in this niche of action game by pitting players against hordes of oversized insects, aliens that are called random names, kaiju, and all kinds of robots with a fairly simple and absurd premise holding things together. Throughout these years some of these games have seen some highs and lows as well as some spin-offs in-between but now Sandlot has returned with the next main entry. After being Japanese exclusive for two years, Earth Defense Force 6 has finally made its way to the West and is it everything fans could expect?
Story
After the Primers invaded the Earth it was up to the Earth Defense Force to do whatever they could to try and put a stop to the alien invasion that was destroying the world and after a grueling war that saw nearly the entirety of humanity and its infrastructure destroyed, the EDF finally managed to drive the Primers back into space and achieve a pyrrhic victory. Designed as a direct sequel to Earth Defense Force 5, with so few fighters left alive and most of the world destroyed, three years have passed and what is left of the EDF is still spending their time trying to clean up the remaining alien forces that were left behind by the Primers including the monstrous insects that continue to spawn and breed around the world. One one of these standard extermination missions something strange happens however as a new spaceship appears in the sky above the battle and countless other spaceships arrive and fly into the strange device.
While this is certainly strange, the only thing the soldiers can do is continue on with their extermination mission and return back to base once every visible alien invader is slain. The only problem is, the very next mission the world has rapidly changed and the only one that notices anything happens to be the player and one other character in what quickly becomes perhaps one of the more unique takes on storytelling for the franchise yet, time travel. Players will find themselves embroiled in multiple trips through time as they find themselves fighting old battles using the knowledge they have from the future to try and change the outcome of events all while the Primers and an unknown force try to steer things towards humanity’s complete annihilation.
Earth Defense Force 6‘s fun little story hook works to put a new spin on the franchise while also allowing the team to make use of some of the most signature moments from the past entry. Depending on how much of a fan players are of the franchise, this can be seen as either a good or bad thing. It’s not the best because it does mean playing through recycled storylines, but it does provide new twists on events as players can see how events have been twisted thanks to time travel and the meddling of both their own actions and the unknown force’s.
It also happens to fit perfectly with the franchise’s B movie of storytelling, making this new entry feel right at home with the series’ ridiculousness with how mixes together both old and new storyline to tell its own uniquely engaging tale even if it mostly serves as window dressing to slaying thousands of giant insects and all other manners of alien-like beings, kaiju, and much more.
Gameplay
Earth Defense Force 6 features a very bare bones menu system where players can select to either play the game solo, online with up to three other players, or in split-screen couch co-op which is something sorely lacking in many multiplayer games these days. It is worth noting that for the most part the game plays the same solo or online, except should the player die in single player, they instantly fail the mission while in co-op or online an ally can come and revive them. That being said, once players choose what type of game mode they want to tackle the story in they’ll find themselves able to select from one of the total four classes that are returning from the previous game, Ranger, Wing Diver, Air Raider, and Fencer.
Most of these classes still play in similar fashion as they did in Earth Defense Force 5 though some refinements and a few unfortunate debuffs have been made depending on which class someone has as their favorite. The Ranger class is a very straightforward one that uses powerful weaponry with perhaps the most variety of standard weapons available to them and can deal massive amounts of damage despite their low mobility. The Wing Diver has seen some unfortunate modifications as this class still remains the fastest and most maneuverable on the battlefield thanks to her jetpacks and ability to quick-dash out of the way of danger, the default flight and dodge speed is slower than before, requiring players to obtain better gear to make her more viable as Wing Diver’s also have the lowest health pool of the classes. That being said, they also gain some of the strongest and most unusual weapons that generally make use of the Wing Diver’s engine core power to reload, making players balance between zipping around the field and reloading properly.
As for the Air Raider, this also relatively weak at first class makes use of various tools to help dispatch the countless aliens and monsters that players encounter. These tools range from special types of drones that can fly around and deal damage to even calling in special air strikes to eliminate large swathes of enemies. Finally the Fencer is a walking tank of a character that can use two massive weapons and even deploy a shield to mitigate any incoming damage from foes that fire weapons or various long range attacks. Every class can equip both a primary and secondary weapon, a “tool” and a class specific item.
It is a bit unfortunate however that while all weapons are given a description and a rundown of their stats, there is no preview for how they actually work in a fight nor are players given a hint as to what to expect from any given mission. This means players may unlock a number of new weapons and want to try them, only to find out that they are either meant for entirely different types of enemies or cannot keep up the DPS with how many enemies swarm out of the ground compared to what they may have equipped before. This can lead to some annoying losses or fights that take far longer than they should simply because of bad preparation and no heads up.
Once players select the mission they want to take part in they will initially have only a few difficulty levels available with harder levels locked until the player beats the previous one. Fighting on higher difficulties can often reward the player with better equipment and armor drops but not only are enemies stronger, the damage dealt by friendly fire increases immensely for every step above Normal. In fact, even Normal has friendly fire though it is toned down heavily compared to the amount of damage players deal to enemies. As for these enemies and the missions themselves, many of them boil down to simply finding and eliminating every alien, monster, robot, etc. spawning in the current stage or destroying eggs/hives or teleportation devices. Earth Defense Force 6 does mix things up often, either through its aforementioned time travel aspects that often drop players back into battles fought in Earth Defense Force 5 or tasked with completing a specific task or defending a specific item. This helps keep the over one hundred and forty missions, the most in franchise history, from feeling stale even if the premise throughout most fights mostly devolves into seeing who can slaughter the most ants, frog aliens, spiders, and much more, especially since Earth Defense Force 6 introduces a number of new enemy types though we won’t say what.
As players fight against the hordes of monsters, aliens, and robots that come their way, nearly every enemy they defeat will drop something useful as they tear them apart with their weaponry. These range from being small health packs to full healing kits that help restore the player’s health, armor, and even weapons though players will only find out what they actually received once they complete a mission. Many of these drops are spread across classes though it does seem to favor the player’s current class, meaning if they are playing a Wing Diver most weaponry and armor that increases a class’s total health overall, will be obtained but players will also gather equipment and armor for the other three classes as well. It is also a bit unfortunate that players have to be near these item drops to pick them up, as while it might not be an issue for some classes, classes using long range weapons or Wing Divers that have to stay mobile will need to land or run around to gather drops or miss out on equipment entirely since, once a mission ends, anything not picked up is gone.
Audio & Visuals
If there is one thing that Earth Defense Force has always remained fairly consistent with, especially in its mainline games, prioritizing chaos and destruction over actually looking good. These sacrifices to graphical quality does mean that the battle stages, even though varied enough especially in specific levels, and the wide variety of enemies that players will be plowing through look a generation or almost two generations behind presentation wise, it also means that the game can throw hundreds of gigantic ants, hornets, robots, and all mixture of creatures at the player. There’s nothing quite like zipping into a swarm of ants as a Wing Diver and blasting away with a scattering laser and blowing them into hundreds of pieces of thorax and legs without even a dip in frame rate. It is interesting to note that the only time the game does appear to stutter at all is when enemies spawn in, as if the game is pushing itself to the limit for just a brief second before letting chaos reign.
The voice acting… is bad. Like, really bad. Either the voice actors are purposefully hamming it up for that B Level movie type of feeling or something else but don’t expect quality performances here unless players are looking for some comedy. It is also worth noting that the touch pad, which can be used to trigger character barks, requests, and pinging locations, is far too sensitive to the point that even grazing the touchpad while moving or aiming can trigger the character to start singing, asking for help, or chanting EDF! The soundtrack is similarly very basic unfortunately, which is a bit surprising as the game’s main theme song that plays on the PlayStation 5 menu sounds better than what is actually in the game.
Overall
Earth Defense Force 6 remains as true to its roots as with a humorously corny storyline that works well by working in a time travel twist and serving as solid window dressing to plowing through hundreds of giant insects and turning them into mounds of chitin. The EDF experience remains dumb fun even if it might feel a bit repetitive at times. Though it happens to be the best when playing in co-op or online, players should also expect that the series hasn’t grown presentation wise or mechanically much in this latest iteration.
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