The Earth Defense Force 2017 (Xbox 360, 2007)

EDF dose for SI-FI what resident evil did for horror.
The game puts you in the position of a "super" soldier in a si fi invasion scenario.

The game is a busy blast fest complete with some cheezy "straight from the movies" scripting from your npc helpers.
The game offers lots of weapons as pick ups in battle, you can then start with any found weapons when starting a level.
There are over 160 different weapons in the game including assault rifles, sniper rifles, grenades, rocket launchers, missle launchers, bombs, shot guns, plasma guns, century guns, laser guns & more..
This game floods the screen with enemies alot like serious sam in the way of massive amounts (about 100ish) at a time.
Fight giant bugs, robots, ufos & more, just like they do in the movies!
That factor can be engulfing & pretty aw striking at times.
What i see as the better point of the game is the very lite rpg-ish elements.
Like killing monsters for drops of weapons & armor witch becomes a health bonus at the end of the level.
Most of the graphics look really good but are very repetitive.
The pick up items in the game look weak as they are moderate looking 2d sprites.
In cities sky scrapers line most of the streets, in suburbs houses are realistically spaced, with more detail than needed.*
Fully destructible environments are a nice touch.
There are lots of levels(53) to play & you can go back and play any past level at any given time.
The extra crafts in the game like the tank, mech & helicopter are obviously an after thought & tend to not be very useful most of the time.
The tank isnt too bad, but the mech is Way to slow for most situations & the helicopter has an odd control set up & not much armor or mobility.
The gameplay tends to suffer from poor design.
*There are so many things that your character can get hung up on like fences, cars, walls, raised side walks, swing sets, an assortment of poles, building foundations of fallen buildings/houses & debris it makes the game less gratifying than it could be from a gamer standpoint.
This makes the game more of a have to build up health situation(grinding) rather than only getting better at the game.
And the controls are good but if you play with the better of the (only) 2 pre set configurations theres not a dedicated jump button.
Rather they have a button that jumps & rolls.
It doesnt help almost every street has some kind of guard rails.
Thats why i gave it a 3 rating.
So if your like me alot of you shots & time playing may just go to blowing stuff up to have room to actually fight.
This game also suffers from the same problem most dual analog FPS do, in that you need high sensitivity to turn quickly, but it makes it harder than it should be to aim at a very distant target while moving.

So I'd recomend renting this game before you buy it unless you can get a Cheap copy. But if you rent it at least give it a fair chance, so you can decide if its worth buying to you. I own the game, but the harder difficulties are annoying to get hung up on, you take lots of damage before you get unstuck.

Numerical rating 1-10 higher is better

Graphics-8.5 looks good. depends on your tv as to how good

Control-6.5 they need to have more pre sets or better yet the option to configure in any way you prefer.it'd b a nine if it had dedicated jump in the pro config

Sound--9 the sound FX are good

I will finish off my review by saying its a experience, give it a try.
Thanks for your time & Have Fun

Earth Defense 2017 is a very fun game, I love B-movies and this plays like a great B-Movie, the thing I like about it is that when I play I'm smack dab in middle of all this mayhem, even if you try to run and hide, mayhem will follow.
Its a pure shooter, "obliterate the enemy!" "Tiny has been killed" "I will avenge you brother!" "The old man has been killed" "EDF! EDF! EDF!"

Easy and normal levels are very easy to play through, its an introductory run through the fifty plus levels. When I first played it, the announcer kept saying "looks like this is it" and then wham! another wave of enemies or its another level. Easy and normal levels will allow you to find different weapon types and you can decide which to use in different levels, of course you can just survive easily with the default weapon throughout the whole campaign.

Hard, hardest and Inferno levels are very hard, if not impossible with a low health score and low-powered weapons from easy and normal difficulties. I found these higher difficulties require more tactical moves, the days of running happily into battle and blasting anything are gone. Its reversed because the aliens have higher health and do more damage, when my guy (from easy and normal) has low health and does even less damage.
Three things to survive and complete Hard, Hardest and Inferno.

1. Raise Health Score.
2. Collect stronger weapons one level higher
3. Find a strategy and best type of weapon per level (enemy types: land types, air types or mixed types) (location: Hills, Caves, Open city, Mixed... too bad theres no underwater level.)

1. Raise health, collect those Red boxes, this can be achieved through the level 8 mobilization on Easy, farming the ants from two stationary space ships usually will net 200 to over a 1000 health points depending on how long you farm ants 15 minutes to nearly an hour.

2. After raising enough health to survive, jump a level ahead and collect green EDF boxes for stronger weapons, if I was playing hard, I would jump into hardest level and collect weapons from that one level, eventually if I gained enough "omph" to survive in one Inferno level, I would go to that one level and collect EDF weapons. There are some easy levels in all difficulties but I think the very first level gives decent amount of EDF weapons and has a better predictability of the weakest aliens.

3. Even with high health, as I have a little 50,000 health, the game meter will show 9999 but I still have 50,000. The spider level on Hardest and Inferno can wipe me out easy and I learned high health isnt everything but it does gives me more of a "fighting chance" but certain types of weapons that worked in lower difficulties arent powerful enough, become useless, for example in that "protect the snipers" level, in easy and normal, I used the default rifle and firecrackers or grenades but when I hit Hard, Hardest and Inferno. I changed to a beefed up UMAX grenade launcher to take out as many as I could from a distance then reverted to a stronger shotgun for up close and personal. I acquired the final ZER-GUN and used that one on Inferno, setting it up where it needed to be and putting it up where the next wave would appear. That took me a while to get some sort of strategy on that one on the highest difficulty.


Easy and Normal: Mindless shooter... yeah.
Hard: Its hard, its a weaning period.
Hardest and Inferno: Almost a tactical shooter, only two weapon slots, made me wish there was 3 slots

First of all I gotta say I love this game!!! If you are looking for an old school arcade third person shooter where the action is non stop then look no further! Earth Defense Force 2017 will probably be missed out on by a lot of people because the game is a budget title but for the money you can't beat the simple fun of it all! In a style similar to Serious Sam, spiders, ants, GIANT walking robots, HUGE monsters, and nearly fully destructible environments make this game a riot!

The graphics are nothing spectacular. The environments look pretty plain but the enemies and explosions are really well done. Game play is the best thing about this game! You can collect armor to increase your health for the next mission and pickup new and improved weapons as well. The satisfaction of blowing numerous enemies up into the air with a rocket launcher, missiles, or one of the over 150 weapons in the game is second to none. Your guy can carry two weapons at a time and the game has some "strategy" as to which two you want to take with you into a mission. And BTW, there are over 50 missions to play with five difficulties to choose from. There is lots of replay value here because you can collect new weapons each time you play a different difficulty level.

If all those weapons and co-op can't help you push back the invading force, there are also a handful of relatively useless vehicles: a slow but powerful mech, a slow-firing tank, an attack helicopter, and a speeder on loan from Endor. I say they're relatively useless because the controls are straight-up awful. And for some reason, the developers switch up the controls when you're in a vehicle (except for the speeder) which makes sense to the degree that they have some unique weaponry – the mech has a flame thrower, gun, and rocket launcher – but the Y-axis will flip. When you aim up, you're aiming down, and vice versa. It's unnecessarily frustrating, but at least hoping in a vehicle is completely optional.

The heart and soul of any foreign B-movie – foreign to North America in this case – is the often horrid English dub. Earth Defense Force 2017 doesn't disappoint! For those that find the constant quips of the other EDF members the volume can be turned down or off, but for the rest of us we'll enjoy those bon mots which are repeated (often) throughout the game. But their lives are often cut short so you never have to listen to them for long. The sound effects of the weapons are pretty good but the music sucks! I usually turn it down and throw on a custom soundtrack!

If your looking for some mindless shooting fun thats a throwback to shooters of yesterday, then join the Earth Defense Force and kick some alien butt!!

Basically, with the giant bugs and spiders making up the majority of enemies in the 50+ levels, it's like you're in Starship Troopers. You get to mow them down over and over again with automatic weapons and kickass rocket launchers. There's nothing complicated about this game whatsoever. There's no delicate strategy and you don't need to pay attention to the plot line... just blow stuff up. And one of the greatest things about this game is you can take out buildings and bridges in the city without penalty. It never gets old to bring down a Space Needle-looking building over and over again... just because you can and you won't get penalized. Blow up cars, knock out houses... just because they're in the way or you're waiting for the next level. Just pure arcade shooter action... no brain required.

This game by no means will be winning any awards for graphics this year, but if you can get past the initial Xbox style graphics and your main character looking like he’s got a bad case of Scoliosis it isn’t bad and as time goes on it gets better. Graphically it looks unfinished with your character and surroundings seemingly pulled from any old Xbox game, but as the enemy moves in their graphics and the sheer number of things going on around you all at once let you know that this is an Xbox 360 game that does use the processing power your 360 was built for. Amazingly enough the game is actually fun, and the first time you realize your surroundings are fully destructible also it just gets better. In a weird way the game feels “Old School” not Xbox or PS2 Old, but something before their time that gives the feeling of an arcade style game. If you are old enough to know the days that you had to go to an arcade to play anything with decent graphics then you should understand when you play it. If it had a halfway decent story, or maybe just any story to go with it, and better graphics all around it could be a 5 out of 5, but as is… and with a retail price of $39.99 and even cheaper on EBay this is a must have, and well worth a 4 out of 5 just for being fun to play.