Quick Look: Earth Defense Force 5

Thirst

EDF!

Oh! We are the valiant infantry

We are the alpha team with passion and camaraderie

(it's no EDF 4 song but what're you gonna do)

Earth Defense Force is basically Dynasty Warriors except guns, isn't it

It's also secretly a sequel to Mach Rider

EDF! EDF! EDF!

Finally, some proper coverage.

quality cross coast content!!

Yes. It fits the bill of the "IT'S JAPANESE AND WEIRD" genre. Not that great of a video game in my experience. I'd much rather play Hyrule Warriors or the Gundam variant.

EDIT: But I'm welcome to hear differing opinions on why this game is different.

This looks about as generic shooter as possible

Playing this in single player seems crazy to me, I think modern EDF games are 100% built around co-op. Sure, you can play it solo but like they said it's kind of just mindless shooting and you miss out on so much equipment. There are vehicles with multiple seats, buff totems, bunkers, healing beams, you can aim and speed up rockets for your team. At harder difficulties there is actually a surprising amount of strategy and you kind of need a full team with everyone playing their role. Wing Divers to collect boxes and revive people, Fencers to tank and kite enemies around and Air Raiders to be protected until they can call a huge mech and out damage everyone. Some of the missions become extremely difficult. Half the fun for me is frantically rolling around while trying to select from a list of 100 dialogue options for the game to translate to my Japanese teammates.

EDF is a thing where they turned the "Make Game" sliders to 10 for gameplay and 1 for everything else and I love it.

Drought season is in full swing.

@porpoiseproblem: Just check out a video of some of the later missions or on a higher difficulty. Early levels are pretty simple shooting galleries but by the mid-30s you actually have to give some serious thought to the equipment you're going to bring to a mission. EDF5 actually does a pretty good job of giving every weapon type a niche and making sure you can't carry a single weapon that's effective against everything.

By the time you get to Inferno difficulty--I'm not going to say that it's on the level of XCOM, but you do have to approach missions strategically, use the terrain and NPC soldiers to your advantage, things like that.

The graphics are underwhelming and the voice acting is silly but there's genuine depth--without being pointlessly grueling or self-serious.

So much going on here. Alex calls it the 5th numbered game and then they name two other numbers. Dan has seen Under Seige 2 but not the first. It's tournament day in Tap Titans 2.

Cross coast quicklooks are worth at least 2.5 regular quicklooks.

wait rick moranis was in the flintstones snes game

Fun Fact: There's a new EDF game in 2019, and it's being made by Yuke's Co. Ltd. :

@porpoiseproblem: It is DEFINITELY "Japanese and weird". But the mentality that finally got EDF to stick for me with the last one, was realizing that it was actually more of a third person shooter Diablo than a Dynasty Warriors with guns. You run missions from a campaign to acquire gear that allows you to progress further into the campaign, or retry missions on higher difficulties, that will in turn get you even higher level gear, to progress EVEN further, so on and so forth.

There's all kinds of rare legendary weapons you can get to drop that will make you feel overpowered. You eventually level your health to the point of feeling unstoppable. There's different classes that play very differently and can even combo in fun and exciting ways in Co-Op. (The high speed, resource management aspects of the Wing Diver class really clicked with me, while I thought the basic run and gunning of the Ranger class was kind of boring.)

So yeah, the actual running & shooting aspect is maybe not the most involved (as Jeff points out), but neither is the spam clicking combat of Diablo-likes. And for some folks that's an understandable deal-breaker. But if you can get into mindlessly fighting stuff to progress a character (the numbers just get bigger!), then it was pretty effective for me in scratching that itch.

(And also as Darukaru points out, the highest difficulty can be anything but mindless, and I've had a lot of fun in co-op trying to figure out the perfect strategy of classes/weapons/vehicles/tactics to bring to succeed in a particular encounter.)

@49th: single player video game shamed ... impressive to twist your narrative that "coop is fun for me" into you gotta have a mental deficiency to enjoy the game single player. No, maybe let people enjoy it however they want?

my gosh... they are STILL making these?

To save our Mother Earth from any alien attack,

from vicious giant insects who have once again come back,

We'll unleash all of our forces we won't cut them any slack,

THE EDF DEPLOYS!

EDF! E D F! E D F! EEEEE-DEEEEEEEE-EFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!

This game looks like my first project in Unity where I discovered particle effects and physics.

This definitely still looks like the last EDF game they did a QL on...and probably the one before that...still does have that dumb charm to it, that at least gets me to watch a video though.

Also cross-coast Quick Looks are always a treat. I hope we get more of 'em this year.

I'll probably never touch these games, but this was still really fun to watch.

Awesome quick look. Love it when the Coasts combine!!!

With our powers combined...!

Just for the information they seemed to miss.

What changed:

-first EDF where you can keep some of the loot you picked up after failing a mission (depending on difficulty)

-gear of the same type can upgrade almost every aspect of the gun, reload speed, number of rockets etc AND it can be lower lvl too, which won't do anything to your existing item

-the outfits mentioned will change once because you're a civilian initiate, when the attacks start

-Alex has the one class that can sprint, but doesn't use it

Loved the video nontheless

I posted this on youtube as well: I'd be ALL over this game were it not for the fact that its a digital only release. I own every previous edf game released in the eu but I guess I'll never actually own this one (unless I happen to notice the asian version getting cheap enough to import without having to pay a ridiculously high ransom to the dutch customs haha)

Its too bad, cuz this seems to be the best one yet. And I bet that shitty yukes edf WILL get a physical release just because of the graphics looking better.(Im basing that "shitty" on the fact that imo yukes' previous edf game is by far the worst one of them all, it has some quality of life improvements and way better graphics as well but everything about the game part of it sucked ass)

Other than "lots of enemies" and being from Japan this doesn't have much in common with Dynasty Warriors. In DW you have those swarms of harmless enemies (even at high difficulties they rarely attack) that you only kill to get counters or bars moving and the central aspect is the strategic situation where you have to conquer locations and engage elites in duels. In EDF you just have to survive but those swarms are anything but harmless, especially on higher difficulties you die very quickly if you get overrun by a bunch of basic ants. Crowd control isn't for scores or meters but for sheer survival. It's more like a twin stick shooter in that regard.

Also the new bipedal enemies are nasty unless you're super overleveled.

I used to turn my nose up at EDF games, but honestly? This seems like the kind of game I need at this point of my life.

@kdr_11k: That twin stick shooter remark is 100% on point!

Oh, they are having so much fun with EDF! I'm so happy to see that!

I was hoping for a PC release of this soon, but after watching this I might just get the PSN copy. Shame that there doesn't seem to be a physical version to easily get for me.

@moonwalksa: E! D! F!

This looks fun as hell.

I guess I'll just rewatch the last EDF quicklook if I want to see something more interesting than "guy with gun" up close?

@danryckert@jeff@alex

Rick Moranis in GB II PC game.

i love that News jingle that plays.

Shooting bajillions of zerg-rushing insects is...meh, but fighting against weird, 40-foot-tall War-of-the-Worlds walkers, sun-blocking Independence-Day-esque flying saucers and motherfucking Not-Godzillas(tm) while controlling motherfucking Not-Megazord(tm) is where this game series really shines, despite its occasional cringey goofiness.

EDIT: Also, I'd like to point out that there's an in-game billboard advertising "ACIDFACE LOTION: MOISTURIZING" (32:55 in the video) which is either a brilliant example of "Engrish", or evidence that the developers may not be so straight-faced as they seem.

THE EDF DEPLOYS!

I've played through EDF for the 360 and EDF 4 and 4.1. I couldn't get into Insect Armageddon due to the way they gated weapons off, plus it didn't have the same charm. Anyone play that more recently and find it fun?

Me and my wife are excited to get this, but I kinda want to hold off till Iron Rain drops and play that one instead if it's good.

Hang on. Is EDF like Hitman in that it's secretly a comedy?

Rick Moranis voiced Rutt in the 2003 Brother Bear video game.

Those space bugs will never see it coming ♩

They'll see that our mind is too fast for eyes ♪

They're done in ♫

By the time it's hit them, their last surprise ♬

I will say, of the EDF games, this has the most interesting story of them all (not saying a lot, but you know). It shows actual progression of not only your character from a civilian in a bad situation to leading man or woman Storm-1 but also of the world around you, from your fellow soldiers to the intelligence operators and COs relaying you info over the radio. It starts as "It's a bit scary, but we got this" and works its to "Everything's gone, we're all dead" in some dark, disturbing ways I don't recall from the other EDFs. Your comrades start by singing those upbeat songs you see in the QL but slowly devolve into songs about how everything was taken away from them and they're ready to die in that jovial dittyish melody. One of your intelligence officers becomes hysteric in her theory of ending the invasion by maniacally asking "Where is God?"

It has some genuinely disturbing shit, even if it takes a while to get there.

And no one on staff or anyone who matters for game outlets will get far enough to place this on their end of year list. Sounds really interesting thank you for letting me know that it did this in the story. (edit GB does it again. a person on staff did beat it so it may make the end year list).

Reminds me how the ending to super mario galaxy 2 or 1 cant remember which, has an ending where browser kinda wins and mario and crew have to reset the entire universe proving 1 how bat crap insanely powerful rosolina is to survive the vacuum of a dark hole collapsing a universe and 2 that canonly the mario we play as is after the reset in some JO JO bizaree adventure part 6 to 7reset. Leaves dork glasses on floor. But no one gets to see that ending since it involves playing a game to completion and most people dont even finish games these days especially a busy sites like ign, GB, etc

:(

Watching this makes me think this series is basically Attack on Titan but with ants.

@raynorshine: Fantastic

When they started trading off verses...

...I might need to get this dumb game.

Oh, we are the valiant infantry…

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory is fuuuuuucking awesome

Awesome! i like the video that's really amazing game.

EDF games are fantastic and campy as hell. Glad to see some of the GB staff appreciate how ludicrous they are.