Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon review
As my mind has grown more logical over the course of my life, one of the questions I pondered was how aware developers are when they make a bad game. It’s easy to answer that for games based on intellectual properties, because kids will want a SpongeBob Squarepants game because kids will want anything based on SpongeBob Squarepants. No, I’m talking about the games that are their own original property, that end up being bad, whether it’s from the studio just phoning it in for any money, or was just a cluster of bad ideas.
But with Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon, I seemed to just know what the developers of this game were going for. As I was playing it, I got the impression that this is a third-person shooter at it’s most generic, repetitive, and severely dated. But as bargain-bin-classy as game truly is, it felt like the developers wanted to make the very best kind of bargin-bin-classy game. Oh yes, it is bad. But boy is the game still a blast to play.
If you bought this game, you shouldn’t be expecting a logical or captivating storyline about a crew of military men fighting against a vast army of alien insects. And between the relentlessly hokey dialogue between the soldiers, and a plot that is given neither cutscenes or written exposition, expect the most video game of video games to act like it’s 1989. It doesn’t even cut to credits after it’s depressing excuse for an ending. It just gives you the mission stats, then tells you to get back to the main menu already.
To say it encourages you to turn your brain off before playing, is an incredible understatement. But to its credit, Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon brings on the mindless gameplay on a silver platter that surprisingly well constructed. The combat is practically exhaustive in its repetitive nature where you kill thousands of giant ants in whatever game mode you find yourself in. But the precision on the guns is great, the damage you can bring to the city is massive-therefore-satisfying, and the game uses it’s PS2-quality graphics to give an incredibly fluid framerate most of the time.
It also gives you four different kinds of killing machines of men to play as, that are all different in their own way, like one that can fly or one that is slow-but-powerful. It gives a good upgrade system where you earn credits to earn better guns, and also raise levels that can only be achieved if you get to a higher difficulty. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an IQ-shortening video game that gives such high regard towards rewarding the player and their desire to blow up monstrous spiders.
But is it the kind of mindless bug killing spree that’s perfect? No. The reloading system might have sounded good on paper where you need to time a button press to give you more bullets faster, a la Gears of War. But the whole process just brings the game to a halt, and there were constant moments where the button prompts didn’t respond well. It also has an odd thing during the campaign missions where it gives an indication on the map of where you need to go, but there were moments where I had to search for miles to find that big ant stuck behind a building before I can proceed.
But whatever hindrances that I had, whether with or without ironic joy, I’m glad there’s still a place in console retail games for a game like this. It’s a game that Vicious Cycle Software just seemed to want to make as dated of a third-person shooter as possible, but one that is still a great deal of fun. So if you want to just enjoy some deliriously entertaining video game fun like the way it used to be, grab some friends and play this game. Though, preferably in rental or when the price lowers, since this, after all, is still a bad game.
Review written originally on Psychobuttons.com. A new video game website, straight from the BEast Coast!
