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Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon

Editor's note: The PCT staff was excited to hear about the release of the new video game Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon. Its premise is simple: You are the shooter and your goal is to shoot down and kill giant bugs that have invaded Earth. Recognizing that this game would be popular — and perhaps cathartic — to our readers, we thought a review was a must. Since the PCT staff is more "old school" when it comes to video games (think Frogger, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong and Tecmo Bowl) we turned to GIE Media resident "gamer" Jim Blayney for his take on Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon. Blayney is the new media art director for the PCT Media Group's parent company, GIE Media. He can be contacted a jblayney@giemedia.com.

Earth has been invaded by a machine-like alien race…again! Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon (EDF:IA) is the follow-up title to Earth Defense Force 2017 (EDF 2017), in which players took control of a multi-national military unit to fight off an invading robotic alien species known as the Ravagers. In EDF 2017, the Ravagers began their assault by mutating Earth's ants and using them as the initial ground attack, inflicting massive amounts of damage. But in the end, the Ravagers were defeated (source: Wikipedia). In EDF:IA, the Ravagers have a new trick up their sleeves for this next round: use even more bugs!

EDF:IA was my first time playing an EDF game and it quickly became apparent that the game wasn't trying to be anything more than that — a fun, straight-up arcade shooter with a lot of bugs…an insane amount of bugs! In today's era of popular "shooters" (i.e., series such as Halo, Call of Duty and Gears of War) much of the focus lies on the story and creating that "epic moment," or what I like to call "The Ackbar Attribute." That is, the moment in the game when you accomplish a task as a player that causes you to set down the controller, let out a deep breath and fall back into your seat much like Admiral Ackbar does after destroying the Super Star Destroyer in "Return of the Jedi." Sadly, "The Ackbar Attribute" is not to be found in this game.

Oddly enough, EDF:IA's weakness proves to be its biggest strength. The game centers on the Ravagers fighting humans again using more bugs. You take on the role of one the soldiers in a squad called "Lightning" trying to defend the city of New Detroit. As a member of Lightning team, you run to a way-point and wait for a woman from HQ to radio your objective. Basically your objective is to run to a street corner and shoot the bugs. Then she'll tell you to run to the park and shoot more bugs. Then she'll say, "Whoops! There are a lot of bugs there…get out of there!" Go over two blocks, wait there, then shoot even more and more bugs. The bugs never stop! It literally would be a PMP's nightmare (or dream come true)! But thankfully your guns never stop either.

The ants are the first insects that you'll encounter. And at times you'll swear that it's you vs. 100 ants. That's where this game really shines. At one point early in the game, you need to set a C4-type charge on a giant ant hill that is swarming with hundreds of ants. The ants attack by "spitting venom" or by chomping you with their mouths. You would think that an ant that has grown to 1 million times its own size would destroy you with one bite, but thankfully it merely takes away a few health points. Typically in games like this, the gameplay will suffer from some sort of "slow down" with so much happening on the screen at one time. Even with crumbling buildings and bridges and bugs hurtling flaming cars through the air, there is absolutely no slowdown in the action. It plays smooth and frantic. Sadly though, destroying a giant ant hill with an explosive wasn't quite as satisfying as I'd hoped (although my 10-year-old son loved it!).

EDF:IA is a test of your patience for repeatedly positioning yourself to just shoot wave after wave of bugs. But then again shooting giant bugs is just plain fun. But the fun lasts for a short time. It's a game meant to be picked up, played for a short while, then moved on from. Then a few days later, picked up again and played once more. For fans of insects and bad horror B-movies from the 1950s this game is for you.

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