Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders From Planet Space Review

I’ve always been pretty grossed out and terrified by most bugs. It’s gotten a little better over the years, but I still feel my entire body shut down if a bug touches me, and if a bee flies anywhere near me you might mistake me for a Cirque du Soleil performer as I somersault out of the way. It shouldn’t come as much surprise, that blasting away giant mutant ants and spiders from space in Earth Defense Force 2 gives me almost therapeutic satisfaction. There’s also giant robots, flying saucers and rampaging kaiju to destroy, which I don’t really have phobias toward, but are still fun as all hell to shoot at.

D3 Publisher and XSEED Games doubled down on Earth Defense Force last month, with two new games in the franchise coming out back-to-back in America – EU releases are planned for mid-February. Earth Defense Force 4.1 is the PS4 title with a wealth of new content and a big jump to the new generation of consoles, but while Earth Defense Force 2 is a less visually impressive Vita title, the amount of fun contained in this small package absolutely matches its PS4 companion.

The Earth Defense Force games are cheesy B movie romps in their purest form, and the games embrace in the most perfect way, not only in terms of the (incredibly light) story, but in the mindless and explosively fun gameplay. You simply pick your loadout, drop into a mission, and kill everything that moves. There’s a good amount of variety in what you’re killing over the 80+ missions in the game, and there are also numerous environments in which you do killing, but at the end of the day, it’s a simple, repetitive formula that leads to great bursts of fun.

There’s a very, very inconsequential story in the game that gives you vague sense of progression, but your main drive to keep playing is to expand your character loadouts with the 400+ weapons that you can acquire from the random drops. That’s boosted by the fact that the three classes in the game each use wildly different types of weapons.

The basic Infantry unit is the staple of the series, with normal mobility options and a variety of machine guns, shotguns, sniper rifles, rockets and so one. The Pale Wing is lighter and weaker, but has an incredibly fun jetpack flight ability to go alongside a number of weird rapid-burst weapons that can decimate closely packed swarms of enemies. The newest class of the three, the Air Raider, is a support unit with weapons like mines, traps, and automated turrets. It’s a class that can definitely shine in the co-op multiplayer, but in single player missions it was incredibly challenging to engage the enemies successfully with that class.

Unfortunately, I could never get a chance to truly test the Air Raider’s talents in multiplayer, as there were never any online games available for either multiplayer mode. The game supports four player co-op, but if you want to play this with other people, you’ll need to get some friends together or find a dedicated group online. If you can get some multiplayer going, that’s by far the most fun to have with this game; blasting giant creatures and robots with friends has always been a huge draw of the series. If you want to get a little competitive, there’s also a Rumble mode where you can fight against your human partners.

In terms of graphic fidelity, the game looks sharp and has nice vibrant colors and environments. Aside from basic looking grass textures and the bizarrely grey water, the visuals serve their purpose, and the goofy explosion effects add to the cheesy charm. It means that even with dozens of enemies on screen and parts of the environment being destroyed as you fight them, the game was constantly smooth and uninterrupted. Playing it on the PS TV only makes it all look and feel better, and while the game doesn’t sport the same sharp models and textures of the PS4 title, it’s by no means an ugly game.

Earth Defense Force 2 is a great Vita title, and whether you want something to play for a couple of minutes on a toilet or in-between classes, this is a must have. If you’re looking for a new game that you and your friends can have some fun together in, this is also definitely worth checking out. It’s dumb, silly fun, and even though the lack of a story can kill your motivation to progress sometimes, at the end of the day it’s still way too much fun to just drop into Tokyo and blast away dozens of giant mutant ants from space.

Score: 8/10