Earth Defense Force 4.1

Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair

• Gameplay 9/10:

The one thing EDF has going for it is the fun gameplay. Fighting giant insects while blowing up innocent civilian buildings is such a cool idea it's surprising nobody thought of it before. There's robots, there's tanks, there's flying robot women and even a "legally distinct from Godzilla" Godzilla-type monster. The giant robot battles were great, there was only 2 or 3 instances of actually robot action. The shooting mechanics of the game were straight forward with most of the guns having shit-for-accuracy, but that was done on purpose to force players to pick a sniper rifle or learn to shoot mountains of bullets to hit 1 target. The ammunition is unlimited for most guns, so there's never anything boring about the shooting or gunplay. It can get frustrating at certain points because the game has several glitches and often there is little direction about what the objective is. Most of the time however it's just: kill all the bad-guys or blow up all the bad-guy's bases. 

• Graphics 6.5/10:

The graphics would have been great during the PS3 days, yet as a PS4 game these are mediocre visuals at best. Some of the robots look like a lazy anime turned into a polygon and it's hard to make out any details on the human characters. There are some awesome visuals, but that's more the element of how cool the explosions are. So it's like a Michael Bay film. Those of us who enjoy just sitting back and watching "epic explosions" would probably enjoy this kind of game for several hours. Just don't expect this game to be perfect or something you would buy brand new at full price. 

• Sound and Music 5/10:

The music is horrible and I turned it off throughout the entire game. If they were trying to be ironic with such horrible music then maybe it is great, but if you plan on making it through hours of fighting the music must be turned off. The sound effects sound very cheap and nothing sounds like actual gunshots or explosions. The voice over is hilariously bad, but that definitely has to be on purpose because it sounds like a poorly dubbed Godzilla movie. 

• Story 7.5/10:

Aliens are invading Earth, again. Once again the aliens decide to use giant insects as part of their plan for world domination and once the insects have weakened Earth's forces they send in the giant robots to finish everybody off. Pretty bland and just a re-hash of earlier Japanese games. This wouldn't even be considered original by American standards. Fortunately, the EDF have a great execution of this predictable story. It might be cheesy, but they don't fuck it up with stupid plot twists, annoying characters or pointless political commentary. It's just a story and nothing more which is refreshing in this modern day of token ethnic characters and social commentary. Just sick back with your nachos and enjoy the game. 

• Replay Value 9/10:

There's a lot to do with 4 different character types to upgrade and personalize. There is almost 100 levels and every mission has multiple difficulty settings which each offer unique rewards to upgrade your character even further. Level grinding is necessary because of the need for extra armor and better weapons. I found myself spending several hours just replaying the same level trying to get a weapon that I really wanted. With so many weapons to pick from there's a thousand different ways to beat each of the levels. So you will definitely have plenty to do. 

• Originality 6/10:

With an obvious Godzilla rip off and the stereotypical Japanese obsession with robots there isn't anything ground breaking about the setting or story. The only thing unique about this game would be the choice of deploying your own vehicles with the Ranger class and the flight suit from the female characters. There is something that I've wanted to see in games and that's the ability to destroy almost every structure, but that was already done before with the Mercenaries video game series. It might not be entirely original, but it manages to bring together great concepts from other games. 

• Multiplayer 7/10:

There is a multiplayer, which sucks, but it is a classic split screen and I don't think it had any effect on the quality of the single player campaign. However, I think the inclusion of the Ranger class kind of forces players to go into co-op mode. The Ranger class is pretty much useless by yourself because he doesn't have any direct weapons and you rely on somebody else to shoot for you. With crappy AI there's no way anybody could depend on the computer generated soldiers.