Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable

Overview

EDF 2017 Portable is a enhanced port of Earth Defense Force 2017 for the PlayStation Vita. It casts the player in the role of Storm 1, an elite soldier in the Japanese branch of the Earth Defense Force, tasked with defending the world from the invading horde of giant insects and killer robots.

In addition to keeping all the content from the original Xbox 360 version, Portable adds 7 additional missions, 4 player online and local co-op play, new weapons, as well as the ability to play as a Pale Wing - the female jet pack equipped soldiers from Global Defence Force.

Story

In 2013 the Earth receives a radio signal from space - quickly recognized as evidence of intelligent alien life. While many start imagining them as peaceful beings, coming to share their knowledge with humanity, the world governments are wary, and in 2015 they decide to form a unified Earth Defense Force to be ready in case these aliens should prove to be a threat.

Then, in 2017, the aliens arrive, hovering over the worlds major cities in gigantic spaceships. Initial attempts at communicating with them prove futile, but they soon make their intentions clear enough as they unleash a horde of giant insects, killer robots, attack ships, and gargantuan beasts to prey upon the people of Earth. Naming the aliens Ravagers, the Earth Defense Force takes up the fight, but finds itself outnumbered and outgunned. Continent by continent the EDF is forced to withdraw, with only one branch experiencing some degree of success. Spearheaded by its elite Storm 1 unit, the Japanese branch manages to hold its own against the Ravager menace, until finally it is the only thing left standing between humanity and complete annihilation.

Rather than being a sequel to the earlier EDF games, Earth Defence Force 2017 is a retelling of the plot of the first EDF game, released in the west as Monster Attack on the PlayStation 2.

Gameplay

Earth Defense Force 2017 Portable is a fast paced, mission based third-person shooter. Lacking the tight corridors, regenerating health or a cover mechanic common in other contemporary shooters, it is instead focused on exercising crowd control on large, open battlefields. Also important is making the most of the games two weapon two weapon loadout system, as bringing the wrong weapons on a mission can make it hard, or outright impossible in some cases, to complete.

The game has 60 relatively short missions, and is focused on replayability, using the persistent upgrade system to prepare the player character for tackling the games five difficulty levels - Easy, Normal, Hard, Hardest, and Inferno. Upgrades come in the form of items left on the battlefield by defeated enemies - smaller enemies may leave one item, while larger ones will always leave several.

There are four types of items in the game:

• Armor upgrades - gives the current character a permanent hit point increase upon completing the mission.
• Weapon case - gives the current character a random weapon upon completing the mission. The quality of the weapon is dependent on the mission and the difficulty level, and may be one the character already has.
• Small medkit - restores a bit of health to the character
• Large medkit - restores a good amount of health to the character

Aside from certain limited use weapons, everything in the EDF's arsenal has unlimited ammo, so the game has no ammo pick-ups.

Characters

The game has two playable characters, Storm 1 and the Pale Wing. Each character is upgraded separately, and has its own repository of hundreds of weapons.

Storm 1

Storm 1 is a male EDF trooper, and the protagonist of the Earth Defense Force series. He lacks any special abilities beyond being able to dodge roll to the side and jump over small obstacles. His main focus is his huge array of different weapons. The weapons are divided into eight categories, each generally containing armaments conforming to a certain type, though all of them have exotic variants that may deviate from the others significantly:

• Assault Rifles - Basic rifles with high rate of fire, and moderate damage and range.
• Shotguns - Fires multiple bullets at once, in various spread patterns.
• Sniper Rifles - Slow, but high damage and with zoom functionality.
• Rocket Launchers - Fires unguided rockets in a straight line.
• Missile Launchers - Less damage than rockets, but will home in on nearby enemies automatically.
• Grenades - Very powerful, but limited range and often hard aim.
• Special Weapons - Turrets, bombs, acid/flame guns, fear projectors and other highly exotic weaponry.
• Tools - Shields, healing items and other support equipment.

Storm 1 also has access to the game's four vehicles:

• E551 Combat Vehicle Gigantus - A basic tank, it offers good mobility, but its only weapon is a slow firing grenade canon, making it helpless in close range combat.
• EF24 Combat Helicopter Bazelato - The only flying vehicle in the game, it offers twin machine guns and missiles with limited homing capability. Its controls are however slow to respond, and the craft has difficulty effectively engaging ground targets.
• SDL2 Airbike - The fastest vehicle in the game, it is also very frail, and armed with only with twin machine guns.
• Battle Machine Vegalta - A heavily armed bipedal mech, it boasts the most formidable arsenal of all the vehicles, carrying a gatling gun, a rocket launcher, and a flamethrower. Its firepower is however offset by its slow movement rate and turning speed.

The vehicles provide extra armor and firepower, at the expense of reduced mobility. They scale to the chosen difficulty, and can be further enhanced with certain weapons. They continue to function until they've taken too much damage, at which point the pilot is ejected and the vehicle explodes.

Pale Wing

The Pale Wing is a female EDF soldier, armed with energy weapons and a jetpack. She is a hidden bonus character, and unlocked by completing the final mission with Storm 1 on any difficulty. Originally introduced in the second EDF game (released in Europe as Global Defence Force), she is a product of human adaptation of Ravager technology, making her appearance in EDF 2017 non-canon, and therefore not acknowledged in the game's storyline.

Her main differentiating features are her jetpack, her weapons, and the energy system that powers both. The jetpack makes her much more mobile, letting her expend energy to fly around the battlefield at great speeds. As a trade-off, she is unable to make use of an of the game's vehicles, and starts with half the health of Storm 1, gaining additional health from armor upgrades at a reduced rate. This makes constant movement to avoid enemy attacks important, as she is frequently too frail to soak up damage the way Storm 1 can.

The Pale Wing has access to an entirely different collection of weapons, though as with Storm 1 they are grouped into eight categories:

• Short-Range Weapon - Short range, but with comparatively high damage output.
• Mid-Range: Laser - Continuos stream of damage to a single target
• Mid-Range: Torpedo - Streams of energy missiles
• Mid-Range: Beam - Powerful spread beams with high energy drain.
• Snipe Weapon - Long range weapons with zoom.
• Ranged Weapon - Explosive plasma missiles and grenades
• Homing Weapon - Homing energy projectiles
• Support Weapon - Bolts of energy that will hover and fire projectiles over an area for a time

Rather than reloading her weapons, the Pale Wing recharges them with her available energy. Some weapons have magazines, and will only drain energy when empty. Others do not and will thus continually drain energy when fired. A few come with their own energy source and do not drain the Pale Wing at all.

Because of her reliance on expending energy to use her abilities, managing her available energy becomes an important part of playing the Pale Wing. Energy will only recharge when she's not using any of it, and if she completely drains her remaining energy her suit will overheat. This triggers a full 10 second recharge where she is unable to fly or recharge weapons, leaving her extremely vulnerable.

Missions

The game has 60 missions, following Storm 1 from the start of the Ravager invasion to the final battle against the alien mothership.

(*) Missions marked with an asterisk are unique to EDF 2017 Portable, and are not found in the original Xbox 360 version.