360, PS3
$43.99, could go up.
Space Battleship Yamato The Movie is $9.95 on Blu-ray on Amazon as I write this. It's an English dubbed live action film from Japan based on an anime. To my knowledge the series has not been on any basic cable channel in America. The anime is a celebrated classic, it however doesn't have a huge following in the US. The film was shown in select theater across the US. That's why it's marked down to $9.95.
Why was I writing about Space Battleship Yamato The Movie? Because Earth Defense Force 2025 is currently $43.99 on Amazon as I write this. It's a budget title from Japan, meaning in Japan it wasn't very high in price when it came out and can not be considered a triple AAA game with the amount of money and time spent on it. The game doesn't have a large fan base in America and is not considered a classic. In no way should it be $43.99. Why is it then?
This will not be answered, but I will say wait until this goes down in price if you want to get this game and I believe it will go down in price.
Earth Defense Force 2025 is the sequel to Earth Defense Force 2017, I only mention that because the characters in the game won't stop talking about the previous game. "Seven year earlier," again and again it fires out of the faces of my soldiers and citizens running away from bugs. You play as four types of soldiers, each with different characteristics and powers. Your enemies are giant bugs and aliens and your mission is to save the world from an invasion from them again.
I'm shooting lasers at giant bugs while flying through the air and I'm a pretty girl; pretty girl and I'm happily mowing them down. What the game does have going for it is the massive amount of weapons you can kill enemies with. The game boasts more than 100 weapons to try. All the kooky lasers, plasma grenades and sci-fi tech you can stomach. Some weapons are overpowered like a lock-on plasma launcher that kept kicking the carcass of a giant dead ant higher and higher into the air. The ant was already dead.
What my copy of the game didn't have was the Pure Decoy Launchers, a weapon that fires blow up dolls of maids from Dream Club, a dating sim game released from the same publisher D3. These blow up dolls attract enemies to certain areas for a clean mop up. It was part of the Amazon Exclusive "Ranger" Weapon Pack if you pre-orderd the game, now DLC.
Playing as a Wing Diver, one of the different soldier classes, did I rocket my way through levels killing hordes of insects. Wing Divers can fly, look like cyborg Japanese idols and have light armor. The other classes include: Rangers, who are your regular soldiers, nothing special about them. Fencers are armor clad soldiera who can take many a hit, but are very very slow. My AI squad lost me in some ant tunnels. I felt like a fat kid missing out on all the fun. Air Raiders can summon vehicles and tactical strikes, they were my least favorite to use.
You have AI Squads that will follow you in missions. All they can do is follow you around and comment like crazy. Sometime it's to the point of aggravation. "Stop telling me your out of bullets, " myself while playing.
This game has been fully dubbed and I can hear some known anime voice actors I've heard a million times coming from my squad and as a scientist whose been studying the giant bugs. Why it was dubbed and not rewritten better might be a key reason why it wasn't that fun.
EDF 2025 tries to be campy. A scientist directing you, the citizens, your fellow soldiers all sound like 1950's monster movies, which fits in the game world. Why they didn't take the writing to another level and make it as funny as possible? I don't know.
There's been a few dubs of animes where the show has been rewritten like Shin Chan, Sgt. Frog and Ghost Stories, where they lose the more boring subtle talk of characters and rewrite it to be as funny as possible, this game desperately need that. What we have is, " Oh, no they're coming." Or very cheap 1950's jokes. "The Wing Divers will always defeat the bugs because they can fly, nothing can stop them, 'They've been stopped by giant webs."
We could go with this instead of it was written to be more humorous:
Soldier:"The Wing Divers will always defeat the bugs because they can fly, nothing can stop them."
Scientist: "Oh, no Spider-
Or really anything.
The pain of the audio cues on missions gets to you. It's not the campy writing, it's the SCREAMING! When multiple citizens or soldiers get attacked they repeat their lines non-stop. "Ahh, kill me, 'Ahh, save me, " ,awe shut-up!
The screaming is added to collective "meh" nature of the game. Character animation and crowd animation is jittery. Giant insects are buggy. I swear sometimes some insects seem to just plop out of the sky for some weird problem. Giants ants would just plop in front of me upside down looking confused. Multiple problems you seen in unrefined games popped up.Cheap and forgettable backgrounds, though they are large environments to battle bugs in.
The game does have online co-op and local split screen. Four modes including Inferno, for fans it's beyond hard mode on the menu.
There are some new vehicles to try out, none of them caught my attention. They include a tank and a helicopter.
Loading times were another hit to the thorax as I'd forget I was playing the game they took so long. Having huge levels is no excuse for how limited the graphics and depth of gameplay was.
Earth Defense Force 2025 is a budget shooter that should have been released at twenty dollars and be a fun game to enjoy while not trying to hard. It could have been rewritten and be a title known for its silly writing, instead it will just end up in "On Sale" bins in GameStops and Best Buys.
Reviewer was given PS3 copy by publisher for review purposes.
