Archview #6: Earth Defence Force: Insect Armageddon

 Now this game is right up my alley....

 EDF is an arcadey third-person shooter, and like most arcadey games, that means it's just the game I like. No frills, much thrills straight to the point action, and that's the way I like it. The game is very simple, Aliens have manipulated insects genetically, making them enormous and able to spew damaging liquids(Or damaging cobwebs in the case of spiders), and are using them to invade and ravage earth, and it's up to the Earth Defence Force to stop them.

 You get to pick from one out of four different classes. Each class has different weapons avaiable to them, and each one has different perks. The Battle Armor is slow, but has a Shield and some Energy Attacks, and can take damage like a sponge. The Jet armor grants flight, but flying and reloading now share a regenerating Energy Bar, which if depleted, takes a long while to recover. The Tactical Armor provides different kind of turrets, and lastly, the Trooper, which has no special gimmick, but gets faster reload and reviving speeds. Before each missions, you get to pick two different weapons, but since this is a very arcadey game, ammo is unlimited, with the tradeoff that reloading takes a while. If your timing is good, you can halve the time by pressing reload at the right time.

 Visually, it looks like a PS2 game, which is to be expected from a budget game, but then again, PS2 graphics are not bad. On the plus side, there's little to no slowdown, even when the screen gets crowded with insects. Most of the structures in each stage are destructible, which is awesome. The music is serviceable, and the voice acting is passable. There are loads of cheesy lines, and they sometimes tried to add some funny lines... but they are not too funny. Sound effects are a bit to low, so it's a good idea to temper with the sound settings. They should have added subtitles, since most of the dialogue gets lost amidst the explotions and the gunfire.

 Something that got on my nerves a bit was the lack of damage feedback. It's hard to tell if you are actually hurting or hitting something, since there are no audio cues and the little blood spatters from bullet-based weapons are hard to see, the enemies don't even flinch, so they proceed to move as if nothing.

 

 The game is quite short, with a total of 15 levels spread throughout 3 chapters. The game lasts about 2 to 4 hours on Normal, but higher difficulties will take more time, since enemies get harder to kill, even with higher tier weapons. This, being an arcadey game, was made with replayability in mind, and after you beat it, you unlocked remixed mode, with different enemies on the levels. There's also a Survival Mode. Oddly enough, while Campaign and Remixed Campaign allow for Online or Offline Co-Op, Survival Mode can only be played Cooperatively online. It also has loads of weapons per class. Classes also level up, but it takes a long time to level up each one, perhaps a bit too long. The few enemy types do get a bit repetitive after a while.
 There are quite a few different Vehicles and Turrets on some levels, which help alleviate the repetitiveness, but on higher difficulties, your weapons will probably be much more usefull. This game is better played on Co-Op, since the AI is a bit dumb. For example, they won't sprint to revive you, instead settling for running while shooting. Also, even if they have an enemy right on their face, they will still use explosives and harm themselves. And both of those things don't mix well together, they will die before getting to your corpse! 

 Earth Defence Force: Insect Armageddon is a very good game, but it could've use some more time in the oven to iron out some quirky bugs, enhance the AI and maybe add 5 more levels. Regardless, if you are looking for an action packed game that is not trying to be something else, you can't go wrong with it.

 It's a 7 out of 10.