Some studios will spend years of development time and tens of millions of dollars in pursuit of Hollywood-quality scripts and realistic graphics. The Earth Defence Force series has done the opposite and remains the most ‘revealing’ video game to date. Don’t be fooled by Earth Defense Force 6’s PS3-era graphics, poor voice acting, outrageous plot and occasional frame drops. Developer Sandlot knew exactly what they had to do to develop a game that makes Hellraiser 2 look like a work of art.
Like previous entries in the series, Earth Defense Force 6 focuses on the seemingly minimal content and the chaotic feel of co-op play, a mindless fun above all else, and the end product is a joyous addition to the series. However, even knowing what the series is all about, this one doesn’t play entirely smoothly. The overly long campaign is filled with too much repetitive content, many of the levels are boring, and at times it doesn’t play as deliberately ‘old school’ as it seems, but rather really not fun. Still, this giant insect infested game is fun for the most part, and I wish more of this quality content was accounted for.
Earth Defence Force 6 is a cheap to instead fun third-person co-op shooter that takes you and up to three friends into a world that’s been invaded by aliens. These alien invaders are known as ‘Star Guides’, and most of them are insect-like monsters, which also include the usual flying drones, hillbilly Godzilla monsters, oversized evil ninja frogs, giant spiders jumping around, and more.
Over the 80-plus hours it takes to complete the main storyline mission, which consists of 147 levels, you’ll defeat these low-resolution foes using an ever-growing assortment of guns, rocket launchers, grenades, turrets, carriers, and giant Gundam mechs, some of which feel like great weapons while others look like the product of a thoroughly failed experiment. Pack all of this ridiculousness into an environment with outdated graphics, explosions, and frame drops, and you’re in for a fun time.
In addition, you’ll switch back and forth between four troop types: the Assault Trooper, a standard soldier whose only advantage is using the best weapons; the Winged Stalker, a Valkyrie-like trooper whose jetpack and wings give her unrivalled mobility, with the disadvantage of being too brittle; the Air Raider, typically your second-most-used support troop type, which specialises in calling in mass bombardments, using gadgets like the drones to wipe out bugs and can summon carriers to pump out a lot of damage; and the Sword Soldier, a dual-wielding tank troop that can absorb serious damage with a massive shield and can also crush enemies in melee, but this troop is also more difficult to manoeuvre.
Maybe my choices are more mediocre, but I still prefer the Assault Trooper – nothing beats a rocket launcher that can destroy distant buildings in seconds, and an assault rifle that can easily wipe out hundreds of alien creatures!
While the story of the Earth Defence Force franchise has always been fascinatingly bad, Earth Defence Force 6 takes it to a new level of badness with a plot that makes no sense in more ways than one (and even if, like me, you follow the plot closely and will take careful note of it, it still feels outrageous).
It makes heavy use of the concept of time travel, with the humans losing the war against the Star Guides, and then both you and the aliens having to go back in time to fight again — but confusingly, the good guys rarely make use of the lessons they’ve learnt in the previous timeline, so you have to watch as they slow down to make sense of what’s going on, while you and your characters have long been way ahead of these fools trying to save humanity.
For most of the game time, the ridiculous arrangements are just as hilarious as one would expect, such as a section of the game where giant frog enemies appear and say they’re ‘just like humans’, but they’re clearly frogs. This is followed by very stereotypical little grey men from Mars, who then tell you that they are ‘non-humanoid’ creatures.
Sometimes, though, this setup just makes it very painful to play, such as one episode where they tell you the origins and biological details of a flying dragon monster, while at the same time having you fight it five times in a row, reminiscent of the episodes used to make up the numbers in Dragon Ball Z.
The plot of this story is bad enough, but the sparse dubbing makes it even more ‘elevated’. It sounds like some actors that the local theatre company didn’t even want decided to try their hand at video game dubbing. One of the voiceovers nearly made me sputter, as a character says in the most bored voice ever, ‘You have no idea how relieved I am’ – and you’re right, I never could have known. But between all that cringe-worthy dialogue and pointless plot development, there’s still a lot of fun to be found. There’s still plenty of the intentional cheapness that Earth Defense Force excels at, and the parts that are both ‘bad’ and ‘good’ are the most interesting parts of this game.
Thankfully, the heart and soul of Earth Defense Force 6, the exaggeratedly over-the-top battles against an assortment of low-clearance enemies, is actually a lot of fun and often challenging. Dodging, sprinting and running away from monsters, aliens, giant insects and robots wreaking havoc (even to the point of threatening the frame rate) is exactly the kind of action-packed experience I’ve come to love from the series, and this is the most ambitious in terms of scale in the series.
The scenes may be similar to previous entries, but Earth Defense Force 6 adds a ton of weapons and new enemy types, and it also creates a lot of interesting scenarios for players to play through. In one level, for example, you’ll need to defend a beach from an onslaught of giant, poisonous reptiles. Playing on normal difficulty can be challenging enough, especially if you don’t have a strong enough team.
But once you escalate the difficulty, the battlefield becomes even crazier. To be able to fight, you’ll need to fight a lot of monsters and upgrades, brush up on the necessary powerful weapons and armour, and have teammates who are very familiar with the gameplay. As with previous entries, the simple setting and outrageous plot don’t take away from the fact that the combat is very fun and achieving victory will reap a full sense of accomplishment, so the experience remains quite addictive.
That said, there are design decisions that do cross the line and it’s no longer about being cheap but fun, but really poor design. For example, if you accidentally fall and need to wait for your teammates to come and revive you, you’re left to stare at your dead body from where you are until they come to save you. You have absolutely no way of knowing what your teammates are doing when they aren’t in your vicinity, while there’s no respawn timer, and it’s just so boring to lie there.
Additionally, you’ll repeat missions multiple times on many maps, and while the enemy types and mission objectives are usually at least a little different, I’m still dissatisfied with how few gameplay flourishes there are. Just as bad, you’ll occasionally be forced to play slower-paced, plot-focused levels. While these levels will only appear at certain points, they are simply the worst experience. The plot of this game doesn’t lend itself to being told at a slower pace, and planting levels like these in the middle of an already lengthy campaign is a complete waste of the player’s time.
Earth Defense Force 6 is yet another insane addition to a series known for its hyperbole and clichés, another hallmark of the series that makes minimal use of the power of modern hardware. This is despite the fact that its graphics look like they’re a product of a decade ago, the flow is still riddled with plot holes and bad voice acting, and the combat style is some of the silliest I’ve seen in a long time — but all of that makes this a game that I happily spent dozens of hours giggling my way through. Not all of the spartan design adds to its charm, however, with an overlong campaign flow filled with highly repetitive levels and some counterproductive design choices. But these shortcomings can be easily put behind you when you ‘accidentally’ send your best friend into the sky with a rocket launcher capable of blowing up giant ants and skyscrapers.