Earth Defense Force 2, the best D3 game ever

So, as for what I’ve been playing lately: lots of things, but I’ll not get ahead of myself. I decided to take a risk on The Earth Defense Force 2 (The Chikyuu Boeigun 2), the sequel to perhaps the best-regarded original Simple 2000 series game so far. And at this point, it’s definitely the best D3 game I’ve played.

It places the player in control of an Earth Defense Force soldier (you know, those guys who are always trying to fight off whatever giant monster is attacking Tokyo in Japanese monster movie) charged with ridding various locales of whatever aliens – UFOs, giant ants, stories-high War of the Worlds-style martians, and so on – are attacking. Each level is a very large and detailed environment around which player and enemies can roam freely. Most of the levels so far have been set in urban or suburban environments, usually based on real-world locations (the London map is particularly neat). Enemies come fast, thick, and hard. Fighting a swarm of giant ants feels pretty much exactly how I’d expect it to: they crawl all over EVERYTHING, stick to any surface they walk on, and never stop moving.

The player is well-equipped to handle the situation. Killing enemies can make them randomly drop weapons, health refills, or armor chips, which boost a character’s maximum HP. There’s a huge variety of weapons to be found on levels and chosen from before the start of a mission, and there are two very different characters to choose from. First is the generic soldier-type EDF infantry guy from the first game, who wears a jumpsuit that makes him look an X-Wing pilot and focuses on big, loud conventional weaponry. He has assault rifles, shotguns, bazookas, grenades, and so on, and he can drive different EDF vehicles found on the levels, including a tank, a motorcycle, and a helicopter.

The other character, new to this sequel, is a jetpack-equipped female soldier codenamed Pale Wing. The jetpack works a lot like the one in Ranger-X: pressing the thrust button fires the rockets, thrust can be directed in most directions for a lot of maneuverability, and there’s an energy meter that is depleted by firing the rockets or firing energy weapons. The meter recharges when you’re not putting a drain on it, but if it’s depleted entirely, it overheats and you won’t be able to use anything that requires energy until it (very slowly) recharges. Pale Wing uses energy weapons exclusively, and while there are some analogues to the soldier’s conventional weapons, there are quite a few unique weapon types. To further balance things out, her ground speed is somewhere around half that of the soldier’s, and she only gets one point of armor upgrade per chip collected, compared to two or three per chip for the soldier.

I chose Pale Wing first, since her addition to the sequel was probably my main reason for spurring me to give it a try. I wasn’t expecting the generic soldier to be nearly as fun to use as Pale Wing with her agile jetpack, but he’s still very satisfying to use. He doesn’t run that fast, but his weapons and tank create that sort of death and destruction that feels oh so right.

Now, yes, this is a D3 Simple 2000 game, which means it was developed on a relatively small budget and short schedule, and this fact is apparent when you play the game. It affects the game’s graphics the most: it’s not an extremely pretty game (though the bumpmapping, bloom, and reflection effects added for the sequel are much appreciated), and the variable framerate can easily become one of the worst I’ve ever seen when the screen is choked with monsters. There are also some sour-looking animations here and there, and environment textures aren’t always the hottest. Yet somehow, even at the game’s lowest framerates I still feel like I’m having fun. The game’s mechanics and flow aren’t interrupted or affected by stuttering framerates, and blasting the aliens still feels just as fun. Is this good design or just a sign of overly-simplistic mechanics? I’m not really sure, and it probably doesn’t really matter. It just works. The whole thing is incredibly satsifying in just the way “blowing stuff up real good” should be.

This is a very viscerally thrilling game in the same way a good 2D shooter or a Dynasty Warriors game can be, except in GTA3-sized environments. The goal of the game is always the same: DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, and core of the gameplay is positioning yourself properly for maximum weapon effectiveness while keeping just far enough away from enemies to avoid being overwhelmed. Ground controls aren’t fancy, but they’re effective enough (for the soldier, anyway) to allow you to do your job. There are two control schemes available: a traditional layout with movement assigned to the left stick, weapons on the face buttons, and strafing on shoulder buttons, and a “Technical” setup that works like your standard western-style FPS or third-person shooter controls. Both work pretty well, I’ve found, though I think I prefer Technical for the amount of control it allows when I’m jetpacking around.

The game isn’t terribly difficult on the normal difficulty, so I look forward to trying stages on the three (!) higher difficulty levels. And thankfully, any level can be played on any difficulty as it becomes available: no unlockable-difficulty nonsense here. As you play further in the game and replay levels, you (randomly) find stronger weapons and build up your armor bit by bit, giving it a sort of Dynasty Warriors-ish grinding quality. It will be interesting to see how much of success on higher is determined by this grinding, and how much by player skill.

I do have some specific complaints. The game likes to show you when an alien mothership is dispensing enemies for you to fight, and when it does this it robs you of the camera’s focus for ten or more seconds at a time, while the game is going on. Ideally, you’ll have killed off all the enemies around you before this happens, but, if you haven’t, well… It’s frustrating enough when there are no enemies around, anyway. Next, the helicopter seems to be a piece of crap. The controls seem to emulate an actual helicopter’s cyclic and collective controls, but I’m not sure if it does either quite right. I’ll need to experiment with it more. And what were they thinking, expecting you to use it on a night mission? It’s practically impossible to see those damned winged ants when you’re airborne, without some kind of night vision. It didn’t matter much in the end, though – the equipment I’d chosen for that level evened the odds nicely.

This is not a comprehensive review, as I’ve only been playing the game for a few days and I don’t think I’m close to scratching the surface of what it has to offer (whether it endlessly recapitulates itself, etc), but I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve played so far. If you play only one D3 original game, play this one, and ignore the rest.