Releasing early next month in North America, Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair for the PlayStation 4 is an upgraded port of PlayStation 3’s Earth Defense Force 2025 (EDF 4 in Japan). A lot of Western gamers have likely never touched or know much at all about the frantic third-person shooter series, but a cult-following has grown to support the games, enough so for them to be localized outside of Japan. Recently, I had the opportunity to play EDF 4.1 at an XSEED Games event and experienced being in the Earth Defense Force for the first time.
EDF 4.1 continues humanity’s fight on Earth against invading alien forces, which range from humongous ants to skyscraper-tall lizard creatures. There’s a classic sci-fi aura to it all that I describe as Starship Troopers mixed with Kaiju, a Japanese Tokusatsu film and TV genre featuring giant monsters such as Godzilla.
With everything unlocked for me, I fought through my first mission solo using one of the higher-powered weapons, letting me get my feet wet and take in the game without dying. Of course, that’s not much fun, so I equipped more appropriately balanced weapons from there on out. Also, you can witness me piloting a lumbering, powerful mech robot to take on a giant kaiju lizard at the 17:49 mark.
I was told EDF is known for its cooperative play and hardest level difficulty, aptly named, “Inferno.” EDF 4.1 supports both online and split-screen couch multiplayer, allowing XSEED’s Junpei to join me in tackling a mission on Inferno. As you can see below, the results were not pretty.
Not anticipating how chaotic and difficult Inferno would be, I found myself losing my first attempt with Junpei. The second time was a charm: I had learned to keep my distance from the hoards of ants and Junpei switched to the fast, jetpack-equipped Wing Diver soldier class.
Earth Defense Force 4.1 is not a great shooter by any means. The graphics look rough and very dated. Nothing about the shooting or movement is particularly special and the game overall plays like an old PlayStation 2 title. Despite all that, I still found my experience to be fairly fun, especially with another person. It’s akin to watching a B-movie; to play an EDF game is to indulge in a guilty pleasure. If you like what you see, check out the game when it launches on December 8, 2015 in North America.