As Pike and Mister Adequate are together “in real life”, to use a term, we shall be co-writing today’s blog post!  Obviously one of the first things we decided to do upon meeting up was to play some vidya, and we opted for a game that Mister Adequate brought along, called Earth Defense Force 2017, for Xbox 360.  It was the first time I’ve played it, but Mister Adequate has played it quite a lot, so we will start with him giving us some background on the game and his experiences with it.

Mister Adequate

I first heard of Earth Defense Force in an old issue of Edge magazine, which was reviewing the second one in the series – 2017 being the third – and though it was Japan-only at the time I was instantly taken in by the review which glowed with positivity. Some years later I saw EDF 2017 on Amazon and after confirming it was indeed the same series, I quickly purchased it and found it was even better than Edge had felt its predecessor to be.

EDF 2017 is a B-game. It is low-budget in every respect, from graphics to voice acting, and there is no reason for it to be considered anything other than a second-rate effort from a studio who had neither the budget nor the expertise needed to meet their ambitions.

Except, of course, that it is a sublime piece of brilliance that is incredibly difficult to put down. Despite (perhaps because of?) the low-budget nature of the game it is gaming in a classic form. There is little outside of the main point, which is shooting gigantic aliens with stupidly powerful guns, and what is there is so hilariously bad that it endears rather than repels. The core gameplay however is just immense fun, and the desire to collect all possible weapons drives you to keep playing and playing, as any good system of rewarding players does. In years of enjoying this game I’ve never grown bored with it – it is for all intents and purposes the progeny of classics shooters like Galaga and Space Invaders, and gaming is better for it.

Now I shall turn you over to Mrs. Pike Adequate for her opinions on the game, which she has only first played a couple of days ago!

Pike

The beauty of EDF 2017 is that it puts entertainment first and… well, I’d say it puts everything else second, but it really doesn’t because everything else just doesn’t exist in the game.  Powerups appear as flat sprites, the in-game physics are ridiculous, vehicle controls are about as terrible as you can get, and yet the game never ceases to be fun.

There is no story here because the game doesn’t need one.  Giant bugs are attacking.  So are giant robots.  And giant cyborg dinosaurs.   You have guns and your job is to go shoot them so they can drop more guns.  That’s it.  You do this for 56 levels or so and it’s beautiful.  This is gaming in its very purest form; a shooter without a big fancy budget or any semblance of realistic guns.  It doesn’t attempt to be anything other than what it is, and what it is is unabashedly fun.  Especially in multiplayer.

In other words if you’re looking for a simple, fun, and gloriously mindless multiplayer game, look no further than this one.  It is worth far more than the couple of bucks it will probably cost for you to pick it up.