We love to talk about modern games like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Stellar Blade and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 16 having big PS2 energy thanks to their gameplay mechanics, narrative structure, and general aesthetics, but no experience can lay claim to that crown more than 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Earth Defense Force. The series never looks, plays, or feels especially good, but that doesn’t stop me from falling for it 🐼every damn time.
Developer Sandlot has brought this tongue-in-cheek shooter to life for over two decades, not to mention the mountains of spin-offs and crossovers that keep its B-movie heart beating. It’s just been 𝔉announced that the sixth mainline instalment will be arriving in July, and to both my delight and horror, it looks no better than the past three games.
EDF! EDF! EDF!
Unlike all other big sequels, Earth Defense Force seldom seeks to push the boat out or try to innovate beyond what we already know. It tried before with entries l♑ike Iron Rain, which was more gritty, realistic, and Westernised despite the𓄧 fact you were still playing as soldiers who were throwing themselves against armies of extraterrestrial bugs in the name of glory. It ran like garbage on hardware at the time and was far too finicky and buggy (pun intended) to recapture the brilliance of the mainline games. Years later, it’s only talked about with disdain.
And so Sandlot immediately went back to what it knew best, hurling players into exaggerated versions of cities around the world to do battle with aliens, bugꦍs, and giant frogs with a mix of jetpacks, laser beams, and good old-fashioned assault rifles. It is utterly ridiculous, and Earth Defense Force has always been strongest when it leans into its own absurdity. It’s why I love it, and will jump aboard each new game even if I ultimately know what I’m going to get.
Earth Defense Force Iron Rain? More Like Iron Lame...
As for Earth Defense Force 6, it acts as a direct sequel to the last game, as an alien menace known asꦿ the Primer returns to try and wipe out humanity once again. They seem to be this weird mixture of greys, frogs, tentacle monsters, giant insects, kaiju, and whatever cool thing that Sandlot fancies throwing into the game world. It’s utterly devoid of logic, but who cares?
In order to stop the aliens before all of this goes down, the humans have developed a fancy time machine where they can go back in time to the events of the last game and destroy the alien invaders before they have a chance to do just that. Does this mean we’ll ﷺbe travelling all over the pl🍨ace to wipe these buggers out? I hope so. It’s been out in Japan since 2022, so I could just look it up on YouTube, but that’s no fun. I’ll wait like a good little gamer.
The sixth instalment in the series has the most missions of any yet and seems to go even further with the amount of weapons, veꦍhicles, and classes available to the player. Yourꦫ sole objective with all missions is to wipe the level clean of threats and listen to orders from on high.
Your allies will likely perish on the frontlines as thousands of giant spiders burst from the sky, but they do so with a smile as they sing out abrasive military chants and ♑accept that there is no better death than throwing your life away for the cause. The narrative doesn’t get deep, and is evidently a satirical approach to warfare we’ve seen in countless film💫s over the years, but I admire EDF and its dedication to this several-decades long joke. Or is it even a joke anymore?
Promotion for Earth Defense Force 6 leans into this, presented as a newscast by a duo of reporters who promptly decide to throw away their journalistic duties because their military is offering ‘free steak dinners’ to anyone foolish enough to sign up. Nothing about this is taken seriously, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I’m curious about how a new Earth Defense Force game will be received in a world where 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Helldivers 2 exists and continues to be hugely popular, because ౠin many ways, both tackle albeit Helldivers with far more depth.
Earth Defense Force 6 is asking us to point our endless array of weapons at the enemy and open fire, watching as entire cities are torn to pieces in the crossfire and millions of innocent people are killed, but that doesn’t matter so 🌳long as it looks cool and humanity wins the day.
