Is it possible to revamp a 20-year-old game series in such a way that it both serves the needs of veterans and is attractive enough for newcomers? Japan-based studio Yuke's has tried, and I wouldn't say without success.
I had a chance to play this game on a PlayStation 4 of one of my friends. He also played it. I wrote this review using our experience.
The first Earth Defense Force game was released in 2003, back in the days of Monster Attack. Since then, the series has changed names twice, gone through several development studios, and seen a number of spin-offs. Only the concept has remained constant: as a member of the EDF, stop the giant insect invasion in the form of a fast-paced, outside-looking action game. Now we have the chance to relive - or experience for the first time - everything the invading aliens have tried to do before.
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Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is a textbook example of a (soft) reboot. It has abandoned the more serious, "realistic" graphic design that had been its hallmark, and has set the events in a colourful, playfully destructible voxel world. In the meantime, he has lined up all the familiar game elements and enemies, and placed them under the control of a new menace, the Dark Tyrant. And the plot, presented with cartoonish lightness, immediately begins with the breaking of the Earth into six parts.
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From this lost position, we embark on our mission to save the world, but grinning all the way, we will wipe out the hundreds of giant insects that arrive. The narrative is surprisingly strong, but never slows down the gameplay, and it combines humour and action in a charming and enjoyable way. It's amazingly entertaining to hear a cowboy and a ninja swap recipes as we slice up the enemy with a laser cannon, or to hear the most flirtatious character in the game get embarrassed by flirting while trying to dodge between the missiles of three motherships.
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The gameplay is basically in two parts. First, you set up your team of four in the menu, then you select the next mission, or a previous one, and you're ready to start exterminating bugs. Depending on the level of difficulty, you can complete a mission or course in ten to twenty minutes, but even the more special events and boss fights take no longer than half an hour. And the grades vary spectacularly. Easy mode is literally child's play, normal mode requires you to use your favourite team properly, and hard mode requires you to plan ahead. Not to mention the two extra difficulties that can be unlocked by playing through!
And there's plenty of planning to do, with a wide range of characters, weapons and accessories to choose from. Half of the available soldiers are drawn from the best of the previous games, with Troopers, Fencers, Wing Divers and more. The other half is filled with new characters such as a pirate, the aforementioned ninja and cowboy, an Arab prince, and a seventeen-year-old pop star, but the list is too long to list.
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Each soldier has a unique movement culture, a cooldown ability - which usually aids movement - and a SP Move to recharge. The latter is a powerful attack or support. To really mix things up, you can unlock three variants of each character - alpha, beta and gamma - with different passive attributes like armour, speed or jump.
If all that wasn't enough, you can choose your mordal from ten weapon categories. Starting with shotguns for body-on-body combat, to rifles that span half the field. These have different damage, speed, range, and reload times, with some also featuring automatic aiming. A very useful feature of all of them is that the crosshairs indicate when the opponent is within range, so you don't have to fiddle with virtual distances. Some are also designed just for fun, such as the boxing glove or Santa's bag.
But to achieve the perfect soldier, you'll need one more accessory. These are usually passive bonuses, multipliers that help a character or the whole team during combat. They vary the value of the healing and SP energy that opponents throw at you. They can help a lot, which is why most of them have some negative effects, but later on you can find some with only positive effects.
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Don't be put off by the lengthy description, there won't be a minute of chaos in managing your unit. We do not have everything to hand, and in fact, compared to the equipment listed, we have very little equipment at our disposal at the beginning, everything must be collected during missions. In the field, we have three brothers or sisters waiting to be rescued - the game refers to our deployable comrades. Their whereabouts are conspicuously marked on the mini-map and you can interact with a single button press, but where you find whom, with what weapon and accessory is random, so 'duplicates' will be a constant. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as that's what the development is based on.
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All items and characters evolve, and these level ups happen automatically as soon as you find the existing sibling or tool again. This is most exciting for soldiers, as their level determines which weapon they can use. At first, everyone can choose from the weapon category of their class, but each progression randomly unlocks a new category for them. So you might turn a low-life, flying sniper into a powerful, spear-wielding sky hunter, or a simple machine-gun-toting private into a shotgun-toting medic.
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So there's no shortage of variety on the battlefield. It will be worth taking advantage of and learning from, as we will be in charge of each of our four-man teams during the missions. Not all at the same time, of course: you will only ever control one character at a time, and the others will follow. Although they fire freely, they are not much help, and we have to activate their abilities manually. To compensate for this, they take minimal or no damage. You can switch between them with a single button press, and the character of your choice will teleport to the first active soldier in an instant, and you will immediately take control of them. It's a quick, manoeuvrable switch that also allows you to tactically switch between jetpacks, fly to safety and then switch to snipers.
The whole campaign can be played alone, the game can provide a pleasant diversion or a fair challenge. But for those who want to enjoy the carnage in company, you can choose between split-screen or four-player multi. These modes shift the difficulty levels considerably, and with friends, hard won't sweat you too much either. In co-op, we also move in teams of four, which may seem like it's going to be a mess, but even with three strangers, the battlefield remains transparent throughout.
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There's hardly a flaw in the whole game, you can feel that it's designed to make you have fun while playing it. Yet it cannot be called a masterpiece. One small thing is that the crosshairs on the "corpses" that stay afloat for a few seconds indicate that they are shootable opponents, which is quite distracting. But perhaps its main flaw is that it is aimed at a narrow audience. Spread over a long distance, its twenty-minute-and-a-half-hour missions of more than six minutes make for a great evening's recreation, but its real depth is achieved by constant farming and repetition of tracks. Tasks aren't too varied either, with the goal usually being to completely eliminate your opponent. Still, if you're interested in this style, or this series in particular, there's no better opportunity to take the plunge into giant ant slaughter. And for fans, needless to say, it's a must!
Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is available on PC, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. We (me and my friend) tested it on PlayStation 4.
Earth Defense Force: World Brothers rating
8.5/10.
Positives:
- Charming and light-hearted atmosphere
- Fun and charming
- Gigantic, fun clashes
- Short, easy to consume missions
- Cute little narrative that frames the carnage
Negatives:
- Can quickly become monotonous
- One or two arch-enemies are a real time-suck
- Shows real depth only at the cost of grind