Yup here we are, a new year, and I seem to be funnily enough starting my gaming off the same way: EDF. This time with a new copy, except it's not really. 4.1 is essentially just the PS4 remastering of the older PS3 game of EDF2025. Same basic plot ideas, a whole lot of the same levels, but that ever so slight glimmer of polish and trickling of extra features added on top of things that just pop out in surprise as new. Some levels and balances are changed up, but it still all comes back to the same job in a lot of the same places: You shoot giant bugs with an absurdly overwhelming amount of ammunition in b-grade glory.
So far I've gotten up to about 35 levels in out of the... whatever large load there is. You'd be amazed at how long they keep this stuff going. As normal, I've stayed true to playing as a standard soldier most of the way. The others tend to have something that always bugs me. I did just recently try playing as the fencer though, and might try to struggle through that one. Either way, I'm reminded this game just needs a freakin' sprint button really badly. Giant fields of destructible buildings and enemies isn't so fun at a fixed jogging pace... plus this was 2016, I'm not asking you go all COD on people, but you can pick up a couple basic modern functions that just make sense. Oh yeah, and the jump and roll button is mashed up into one for some reason. Huh.
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| Alien dragons! |
The game in large part started out the same way, but be it because I just stayed on it longer, or the later levels change, I'm starting to see some new twists. Unfortunately they did revamp one of my favorites. I loved the PS3 level where you fought exclusively the little fighter drone ships, and they cluttered up so much of a mess that when you shot one, it bounced off into another, or then plowed straight into a building, and it became just a giant space alien pin-ball of destruction that lagged the game to hell in back. Yet it was just a sheer joy to witness, and I had so much fun just essentially spinning the wheel, and seeing which buildings would collapse next. In this newer version, the closest level is one where they're all coming out the mother ship in this vacant park area. You'd actually have to walk away from the battlefield to get towards the cluttered buildings, so your basically just stuck in the most boring assortment of ship shooting for the entire level. Even worse, there's a later level involving a newer red ship, and you shoot like 6-8 of them the entire level. Not only anti-climatic, but they're just dumb enemies, never used again so far and take a ton to take down a single one (yet they bounce around like rubber balls if so much as 3 bullets hit them). Similarly there was also a godzilla enemy who just poked his head in, and disappears for the next 10 levels. Weird guys.
If I were to make one final complaint, it's that the loot feels off in this one. I remember all the other games giving me a slow trickle of new and fresh interesting weapons in. Here, I was almost immediately compelled to start hitting the harder difficulties for anything worth a dent. Not only that, but it was like 10 or more levels in until I got an assault rifle that was better than the default. The basic assault rifle for the basic guy took over an hour to find a single upgrade in a game where half the fun is punching aliens with lots of different weapons. Very similar for my rocket launcher secondary. Meanwhile I've got like 20 different shotguns and grenade types, as if that does me any good when most of the levels have distant clusters of insects best killed BEFORE they're right in your face. Something didn't balance out right here. The weapons I'm currently using came from where I got lucky on playing one of the hardest modes. I'd love to play and get some more from that difficulty, but with such bullshit droprates and everything turning up duplicate by now, I'm never progressing to the point where I've got a real chance thanks to underwhelming gunfire, except for in like 4 levels. The basic ants become super-lethal bullet sponged, and my explosives all go just as lethal on my own team, so I'm screwed in multiple angles with poor firepower that I can't upgrade because they won't give me the proper firepower on lower difficulties to play the higher difficulties. So I'm left slowly grinding armor up instead (past 500hp, and still can't beat the first tunnel level on harder), and... you've got to do this for each and every class. Fuck.
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| ♫"The EDF Deploys!"♪ |
Enough whining though, because I'm still obviously playing this game because it's still fun. Hell I bought it twice considering the differences are fairly shallow. It's still fun to blast insects, and for every complaint I can fuss about, there's a lot of moments where I just enjoy singling out the best level to go and replay to use a reckless super grenade launcher that shoots in parings of 3. Oh and speaking of which, the effects on this game pack an extra punch. I think they re-recorded the sound, NPC reaction, and scope of every explosion, because it just feels so epic every time a good one goes off. So many times I just see huge bombs or blasts drop, and as my soldier flinches you see these massive ants come out of the plumes of fire and smoke with just the perfect flicker of apocalyptic glow, and you just think to yourself: "Let's see that again," with a rocket launcher in hand. Oh and the tunnel levels revel in this new lighting, being actually dark this time, and you can't help but spam a rocket launcher just to help light the way... while also lighting up the bugs. Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to that distant promise of fighting alien dragons, and whatever else lies ahead. So... yeah, this game is still something worth playing through, and that's why I'm currently playing it. Time to go back and exterminate some bugs.
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