Review #639: Earth Defense Force 2 - Invaders from Planet Space

 At least it's not planet water or planet air.

 The bugs are back and the Vita needed great exclusives, so it's only natural they'd call the EDF to squash some bugs and leave their mark on Sony's latest, and at this point in time final, handheld console. Fans of the franchise rejoice, and those that dislike it, well, this one isn't gonna change your mind anytime soon.

 As per usual, giant bugs invade the Earth and it's up to the EDF to defend the Earth from these invaders. The game is made up of 78 short-ish missions, in which you can take any of the three different playable character classes to protect the earth. The game could be played online in multiplayer, or if by chance you know someone with a Vita, via ad-hoc. Each character is very different from one another, for instance, the Trooper is the vanilla generic soldier that can equip 'normal' weaponry, from bazookas, to missile launchers or assault rifles while also being able to ride Vehicles. The Air Rider is strictly support, it can ride vehicles too, but it's gameplay is all about laying mines, turrets or even call on air-strikes... he isn't so good in a single player run. Lastly, the pale wing, aka the lass with the jetpack. She uses powerful area-covering energy weapons that run on the same energy from her jetpack, if you deplete the entire gauge it overheats and you must wait a while before you can reload or fly again. Basically, every character will give you an entirely different playstyle, which makes the game oh so replayable. Add to this that you are supposed to replay every mission in all 5 difficulty settings, encouraged by the fact that higher difficulties means better weapons!

 And that's pretty much the entire point of Earth Defense Force: Kill giant insects, collect their armor or weapon drops, customize your loadout and jump into the fray again. Armor drops increase your total health by 1 point per pick-up, so it's in your best interest to gather as many of these as you can. Weapon drops are a bit random, while you are guaranteed a weapon for your selected class, it may be a repeat. To help you in battle, pretty much every single outdoor mission features at least two vehicles. They control like butt, but they are useful, particularly on the latter missions. Oh boy, are the final missions tough, I had to scale down to the Easy difficulty since enemies could shred through my HP in a few seconds flat. To be fair, most of the fun in the game comes with replaying missions while increasing the difficulty setting as to get better weapons and thus be able to handle tougher customers.

 One of the things that hurts the most in the game is dying, since it means losing anything and everything you may have picked up on the level, and while stages are short, drops are random, so it always stings. But the worst thing about it... is that your loadout may not always be up to snuff. I was loving my time rocking an assault rifle with a shotgun as my secondary weapon, but when the giant UFOs came into the scene, my bullets just couldn't reach the enemy. I had to forfeit all my sweet, sweet loot and restart the mission with another loadout. This happened more times than I would've liked, and while I appreciate having to experiment with other weapon types, I even found a few favorites thanks to this, it would've been better if the game gave you some kind of warning about a suggested loadout or at least let you keep some of your drops upon death.

 While vehicles have the worst controls ever in the history of mankind, the on-foot controls fare much better. Aiming is alright, but it´s not as precise as the game needs, that said, the game is not as brutal as to demand pixel-perfect precision. The R button is used to shoot, which is brilliant, and L jumps, which makes perfect sense. Sadly, rolling and jumping, with the on-foot classes, share the L button, and the game decides whether you jump or rolling depending on how you hold the left analog nub, hold it anywhere but up and you´ll roll... which is a bit too sensitive and will make you roll a few times you just wanted to jump. All in all, it works decently, but it's nor perfect... at least unless you include vehicles into the equation, in which case... I'd rather not say.

 Earth Defense Force 2 - Invaders from Planet Space for the Playstation Vita is quite probably the weakest EDF game I've played yet, understandable since this is a simple remake of one of the older games, but even then it's still a bloody good time. Blasting giant bugs feels great, and the constant influx of new weapons and health upgrades makes for a very rewarding experience, at least when your loadout doesn't prevent you from finishing a stage. The brevity of each mission(save the last one...) makes for the perfect on-the-go experience, since you can just pop your Vita, play a couple of missions and go on with your day. The Vita struggled for exclusives, and while EDF 2 is not a system seller, it's still one you'd want in your library.
 7.5 out of 10