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[Earth Defense Force] EDF 5 out now on Steam!
Dac
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOZfDS1fZioEarth Defense Force is a game series wherein you play a soldier that finds themselves at the front lines of a new war, defending the planet against an invasion of space-borne giant insects. And frog people. And alien grays. And robots. And Godzillas. Over the course of many (100+) missions, the player can choose to play as one of four different classes - Ranger, Air Raider, Wing Diver, and Fencer - each with their own selection of unique weapons and support skills to tackle the seemingly unending bug menace.
Do you remember watching Starship Troopers as a kid and wishing you could play that as a game? That's EDF, right down to its tone.
The EDF series' hallmarks are: ridiculous numbers of enemies on screen, goofy weapons, using the voice commands to scream "EDF!" in online play at minimum six times a mission - at least when you're not organizing an impromptu recital of the EDF theme song - and its utter dedication to leaning in on its ridiculously camp concept. Oh, and bad voice acting. Horrendously bad, stilted, often hilarious voice acting.
The series has a relatively small but loyal fanbase. EDF 5 was just released on PC, and Iron Rain - the much anticipated graphical update that also shakes up some core mechanics - was released on PS4 this April.
Whichever platform you choose to do it on, we hope that you'll join us in, and enjoy, KILLING MONSTERS.
Steam: catseye543
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Dac on
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Please send help, too many bugs.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
it's almost identical to a human...
They're not like humans at all...!
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Yeah, that first Godzilla mission where you're supposed to drive him away after he wakes up from his nap? I was doing a 4-player with that and there was a player convinced that the mission was bugged because of how long it was taking.
At least I was an Air Raider and was constantly calling down Autocannon and rapid fire cannon strikes. Otherwise it could have been even longer.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
looks like it should be easier than 4.1 to uncap the weapons/armor too
Bravely Default / 3DS Friend Code = 3394-3571-1609
edit- For those that may not know about the glory of this song. Yes, it was actually in the EDF 2025. What's better is that your character can start singing it in game and your AI teammates will all start joining in on the song as you fight the alien menace.
It commits a cardinal sin for EDF. It's boring. It makes you start soul searching if it's actually fun to be doing this. Ugh.
The new song in 5 is growing on me, but I sure miss this oldie.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
I feel like this is baked right into the game design, with the "leave one enemy alive and go back and get all your loot crates." They made some fixes to reduce grinding, but who enjoys spending half their playtime walking to boxes? I saw people had made a cheat to autocollect loot so I picked up the game and am going to try it out.
The new decoys are hilarious. Pegging one of your teammates with one of the new decoys is double hilarious.
Last night I Tokyo Drifted a tank covered in EDF 4.1 vinyls through a sea of ants on a beach.
Is there some Japanese cultural reason why EDF 4 always called them giant insects and EDF 5 always says m-m-m-monsters? Is it like, there's no such word as "ant," "spider" or "web" in Japanese? When they announce their codenames I'm usually just :? . Sometimes I don't know where they're going with some of this dialogue either, like the bits about diplomacy or the impact that an alien invasion is going to have on the economy.
Ah, hubris, ever the bane of the EDF.
Is carpal tunnel not a thing in Japan, either? I don't know why they keep making these assault rifles that are pretty good except you have to keep clicking the mouse button to make it fire. I think I"m going to go in with an autoclicker next time I load the game.
They've tightened up the chatter to be a noticeably less random. It doesn't feel so much like the EDF dudes are struggling to put together a conversation using a tourist's book of stock phrases, like Monkey Island insult swordfighting.
This "newbie" crap is getting old. The troopers who try that crap in the field are going to be singing a different tune once I open up Inferno difficulty, that's for sure. Especially after the five month time skip (which seemed like a weird storytelling choice, since nothing happened except your dude joined the EDF, and they made some new anti-transport weapon that failed to work).
It's weird that so many people have their minds blown by the existence of aliens, especially when it's the guys in the Earth Defense Force. You can't tell me these Adeptus Mechanicus-looking weapon tanks were intended for global peacekeeping. At the very least they imply the existence of a Cobra/Venom/Nod style terrorist organization. Although it's weird that everyone's also in shock at a hundred million dollar price tag. That thing's the size of a house and has a space laser on it, that's no $10 million tank.
Geeze, there are a lot of civilians in some of the early levels.
There are a lot of small but noticeable quality of life improvements. I like the summary of new and improved weapons you've picked up. The word "New" next to actually new weapons blinks now instead of being a slightly different shade of yellow than weapons you haven't equipped before. I like that classes you're not using get some loot at the end, and that you don't have to replay missions again on lower difficulties to get credit (although I wish Hardest and Inferno unlocked sooner). I like that the Ranger (probably everyone?) has a loot pickup radius, although I'm still cheating that. All in all I can't imagine going back to 4.1.
Not sure how I feel about the weapon upgrading so far. It's fun when the gun I'm using gets even better, but the flip side is I when I find a higher level gun and it's not worth switching to (yet).
I wish the EDF games would put in a targeting system and just tell you how far away your target is. All these weapons have a range stat and I don't really know what 150m or 1500m looks like in game. At least the laser sight weapons will change the reticle now, but I'd rather just have that information given to me.
The water effects are probably the worst I've seen in a while. I didn't realize part of the cave was supposed to be water until I was already wading in it. I get that this still looks like the PS2 game, but still.
Polygon did an article where they interview some former and current devs about the history of EDF. It is a very good read.
Anyway, the lead producer (IIRC) would almost certainly agree with your statement. In the article he says something along the lines of (paraphrasing), "If we had to choose between 200 ants on screen or 100 ants on screen but increased stability I think our fans would want the former because it's more fun."
To expand on it a bit more. While the game is ugly, even the Devs admit that, they really can't push the graphics all that much because modern consoles are struggling enough as it is to keep up with the sheer amount of enemies on screen. Since the crazy amount of enemies is what fans like and makes the games fun they refuse to compromise on it.
I tend to use shotguns to punish individual targets with high health pools, like the two humanoid types or one of the spawning anchors. Switch to an explosive or an assault rifle if a group is bearing down on you.
That sounds right. I feel like my sniper options have generally been stronger in that role since I don't have to get so close, but he said crowd control so I was wondering.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Fuck that noise the ants makes. I don't care if that movie is a million years old, that noise still spooks me.
Haven't beaten 5 yet, but we're almost to level 100 at this point, so I feel confident stating the storytelling took a hit compared to 4.1. The new characters have less outsized personalities and they get involved less. They suddenly sprang this ancient aliens angle on us in a single level, which was bizarre after dozens of levels with no plot. There's also a ton of bouncing around without any rhyme or reason. You go to the tunnels for one level real quick, then you leave just as suddenly.
Honestly, I wish they had a cheesy world map and really focused on "we're taking the fight to Belgium now!" type stuff. The levels can be all the same tile sets but they could vastly improve the plot flow with a handful of static images and a bit of voice over.
Oh and more importantly, why reboot the plot at all just to redo the exact scenarios from 4.1 again? Especially since those were homages or redos from 2017 by and large to begin with?
The frogmen and aliens are great. But that new mech is no Fortress Balam for example.
Well, 2017 was basically a redo of EDF 1, and 2025 was a redo of EDF 2. It's what this series does. It's not so much a set of sequels as it is the same core game iterated on over and over again as their technology, budget and available development time increase.
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!
Long ago when I worked at a drive thru, a car with a loose belt pulled up to the speaker, and I kept expecting a giant ant to shuffle up to the window because it sounded exactly like the noise from Them.
You should be able to guess off the initial spawn, don't feel bad about retreating 10 seconds into a map instead of getting your ass beat trying to make it work.
I don’t think I’ve run into any cave mission where the Bound Gun was any good, since they all seem to open up into huge caverns.
EDF still has that jank where you’ve killed almost everything but there’s one ant screwing around on a building in the middle of nowhere, or it’s stuck at the top of a mountain that’s a ten minute hike. I wonder if I can cheat myself a helicopter for that kind of thing.
I ran into a sort-of glitch in the fight against… uh, whatever the codename was for Gamera. It got in a lucky meteor attack against the ground forces and wiped them all out in one strike. I killed Gamera, but died about two seconds after I jumped out to try to fight a few hundred ants by myself. The second time nearly everyone was still alive and they wiped out the ants for me.
It’s kind of weird that a casual game like EDF still has tanks with glacially slow turret traverse and DOS-era steering controls, almost twenty years after Halo let you have a grand old time blasting up everything in a Scorpion.
Are those Japanese mini-trucks good for anything? Every now and then a map will have one yellow triangle and it’s one of those trucks, and it just seems out of place next to all these undrivable cars everywhere. I think the mission with the railgun tank suggested they’re good for stealth, but that’s not really how I’ve been approaching any of the missions.
I haven’t tried the support item that lets all your missiles target the same enemy, but I’ve been using the FORK-A20, which does pretty much the same thing. On Hard, one volley kills a frog, three kills a Gray, five kills their heavy infantry. I’ll be sad when it gets outleveled, because it’s fun to watch. The MLRA does good work against Delroys, but not bringing a sniper rifle or long range missile against the super Delroy screwed me. I had to chase it around for fifteen minutes firing single MLRA shots.
It’s always disappointing to upgrade one of your guns and see that the highlighted change is in fact no change to accuracy or number of shots.
The quality of chatter seems to have really dropped off after the first thirty or forty missions. My teammates seem to be using v0.7 beta protocols again instead of responding with sensical comments. In general, a lot of the dialogue seems weird and out there, like the newbie crap, frogs looking identical to humans, the unemployment schtick, thirty guys spouting off about robots, the mission lady getting sleepy, the Grim Reaper/Spriggan rivalry, etc. I think 4.1 was more charming just sticking with the basics of hubris, horror and cockamamie bull theories.
EDIT: The illegal immigrant talk is kind of bad. Apparently in Japanese the aliens are called "Immigrants" instead of Primers (and in EDF 4.1 they were "Foreigners"), but listening to one particular speech about not letting the illegal immigrants take over our land, end our way of life and make us natives a minority, it's hard to imagine this was unintentional.
There should be unlockable music specifically for when your view is totally obstructed by ants or dragons or pill bugs and all you can do is fire blindly in the direction of red dots on the minimap. Something in the same vein as Yakety Sax. That said, I wish this game had subtitles, because sometimes I want to play it with the sound off.
Whoever wrote the AI for the mobile Shieldbearers is a jerk. Is it really necessary for them to run away as fast I can walk? The same for whoever populates all these maps with thigh-high bushes and other terrain features on missions where you’re craning your head the whole time to shoot Deroys.
I did get a few screens of epilogue text. It wasn't good, and I'm glad it wasn't voiced or else it would have been downright cringey, but it was there.
It was kind of refreshing that the credits took like two minutes.
They're talking about stuff like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimana
The boss design is clearly trying to evoke this religious style imagery as well.
I guess it could be seen as kind of offensive, but I've heard of pop culture using this stuff as "proof" of aliens before, so it didn't phase me. Regarding your screens of epilogue text, did you beat the game in offline mode? The opening tutorial stage is skipped in online mode, so if that is where you saw this text, I guess online mode skips that as well.
Man, the beginning of that video hurts to watch, where the guy is gamely trying to pick up all the weapon and armor crates.