Earth Defence Force 5
I wanted to repost this from my co-host, since I do sincerely love Earth Defence Force 5. I'm conflicted about EDF6 since it's gameplay changes are better, but the storytelling is far weaker. Also the netcode is booty ass. I still think 5 holds up and is probably the one I would recommend to anyone who can tolerate giant bugs and likes loot games and shootin things. I wrote this a couple off years ago, and we're past the Steam holiday sale for the year.
While the Steam and various other Holiday sales are going on, I'm going to shill for what is one of my favorite games, Earth Defense Force 5. I'm no game reviewer or salesman, but more people should at least try the series. At first glance its easy to dismiss it (its not the prettiest game, the gameplay is "simple", there is no plot), but there's more under the surface than you think. As its a common phobia I'll mention it, if you don't like giant insects or amphibians (ants, cute spiders, scary looking spiders, pillbugs, bees, newts, humanoid frogs), this is not going to be the series for you.
To give it the once sentence pitch: EDF is a class and mission based looter shooter with up to 4 player coop inspired by sci-fi and monster B movies and the War of the Worlds radio play. For those of you onboard after that sentence, welcome to the EDF.
For those who haven't jumped on the train, give me some more time to sell you. Conceptually, its a very simple game. You play as one of four classes that have a variety of weaponry to handle the threats coming your way. Shoot bug, collect loot, repeat. The depth comes in the movement options of the various classes, the weapon selection, and the variety of threats you face.
And those threats are quite dangerous. You are always outnumbered and outgunned. Your one saving grace is that you have unlimited ammo, but do have to reload. Health is limited and is only restored by enemy drops or a few weapons/vehicles that player can bring. This is not an easy game and has some nasty difficulty spikes tied to the plot to really make you feel like you're going through it.
Everything has a clear silhouette or unique color and in my hundred hours playing I haven't gone "I couldn't tell what that was and it killed me because I approached it wrong." It does start of slow, spending a couple of missions per enemy and gives you time to get you used to them, but once that introduction is over, it's mixing them in various ways and in various locales to make each mission feel unique. Tired of fighting ants and flying saucers? Bad news, building sized Colonists with pulse rifles are here to snip at you from afar. You can shoot off their limbs, but they'll regenerate. Used to fighting standard colonists? Here are red colonists, but instead of their pulse rifle, they have a shotgun which will fuck you up in no time flat. Like using buildings/the corpses of fallen enemies for cover to fight the colonists, now deal with a spider that does damage over time and forces you to move in a single direction. And now you've got a wave of pillbugs looking to ragdoll you across the map you over coming from the west.
The four classes each have their own way of combating the alien menace. Rangers are the one the game pushes you towards first as its "combat power is highest." Rangers are your generic soldier man who can sprint/combat roll with iframes. They can carry two weapons of the generic soldier variety of assault rifle, shotgun, rocket launcher, etc, and can either get a speed/item collection modifier or a vehicle deployment. They don't have the overwhelming firepower or movement of the other classes. Once you get used to the game, I really would recommend trying something else. I did finish the whole campaign in singleplayer as a Ranger, which was rough and I had to really push through towards the end since I was intimidated by the complexities of the other characters, which I should not have been.
Air Raiders are also pretty generic looking soldiers who can't sprint. In exchange for the generic guns and running, you get to be a character consisting of nothing but Call of Duty killstreak rewards. Air Raiders get the best mechs, the best tanks, air strikes, orbital laser bombardments, and whatever other artillery or bunkers you can think of. It is a difficult class to be solo since your weapons are on cooldowns/enemy kill counts, but watching someone play it well is inspiring about how quickly you can end missions.
Onto the more unique classes, Wing Diver has a jetpack and an energy tank that is used for flight, dodging, and your weapons. They have the fewest health of the four classes, but make up for it in that mobility and sheer close range damage. They also are unique among the four classes as there are benefits to bringing lower ranked weapons. Your max energy cores do upgrade and the best option is usually the highest leveled one. Depending on the mission, you might only have low health threats, so bringing your highest ranked weapon is complete overkill damage wise, and you can trade that damage for energy efficiency by going with a lower level of weapon. Its such a blast to fly around and headshot various things and then zoom out recharge and zoom back in.
The final class is Fencer, which is the walking tank. Your movement and aiming has inertia, so its a class that can take some time to get used to. Your basic walking movement is abysmally slow, but depending on your weapon selection, do get dashes & jumps, which gets you moving to near wing diver levels of speed. Fencer also gets to carry 2 sets of 2 weapons, so you can keep a travel set which gives you the dash and jump (and is generally close range), and then also have the heavy cannons which are slow, but do oodles of damage. I just starting playing Fencer a lot more and the moment I was able to knock an enemy corpse away like a clay pigeon and hit it far off in the distance with my big rifle, I knew I had it down. I wish I had OBS Replay setup for that. I felt so fuckin cool.
The gameplay progression gets a bit strange between single & multiplayer. Weapons, max health, and the unlocked difficulties carry in between single & multiplayer, but the actual completion percentage and what missions you have unlocked do not. For those perfectionists, if you're looking to 100% this game, each class & difficulty contributes to the completion percentage, so you need to complete each mission on each difficulty with each class. Completing a mission on Hard will thankfully mark Easy & Normal as completed, but Hardest & Inferno will not. So, if you want to get that 100% completion achievement, you're looking at closer to a thousand hours in completing the campaign 12 times. They do remix the missions in hardest/inferno, so there are some differences when you're clearing these missions on higher difficulties apart from "bigger damage numbers, less room for error.
I've avoided mentioning the story too much as its not particularly complex. Aliens are there, you're there to stop them. Its easy to make the joke "there is no plot." There are no grand cutscenes, just a mission briefing paragraph that you probably didn't read, and radio chatter from nearby NPCs or command that you probably tuned out. Its easy to do, but you'll also miss the storytelling if you do that. I don't remember who I heard this from, but someone likened the storytelling to a radio play and its stuck with me. You hear the status of the different fronts where its generally not going well. As much of a meme as it is, its still impactful when you hear your NPC allies saying they're having trouble shooting the humanoid aliens because "they look just like humans." The clip of said humans are below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCzGhZkKQik
I'm going to put my thoughts about a trio of missions (Plain of Conflict, Current Headquarters, Brutal Battlefield), in a pastebin, since I don't know how to do spoiler tags on cohost. I'd love to list the mission numbers, but the numbering differs by 1 between multiplayer and singleplayer, just to make things confusing. Those three missions made me start paying attention to those paragraph mission briefings and that radio chatter. Its about 1/3 of the way through the game. There's no major plot revelations, just a sequence of cool moments.
I wish I could find the clip of this, but I don't remember the mission it comes from. There's some NPC soldier chatter about how there's some secret weapon out there that's able to destroy aliens in scores. By this point in the game, you've gained the notice of the officers running the war and have a contact in intelligence who speaks directly to you. She says there is no secret weapon; that's you the NPCs are talking about. You get deployed where battles need to be won. Its how the game gets away with you winning of these battles, but the radio messages can still have that doom and gloom of humanity losing the war since you can't be everywhewre.
All of that lands because the game makes sure its characters take everything seriously. The weakest EDFs are the ones that wink towards the camera, but EDF5 treats itself as real and it sticks the landing because of it. Line deliveries are earnest. A soldier makes a Signs reference about hoping the the aliens being allergic to water, which lands because of the game taking itself seriously. Wouldn't you make that joke if you found out the giant creatures you were fighting were aliens?
All of the individual parts to this game come together and just make something so cohesive and fun. The gameplay loop is simple, but the complexity lies within the mission to mission decision making and threat evaluation. The plot is simple, but it tells itself in such a way that if you pay attention, you'll get sucked into fighting this unwinnable war. I haven't been upset at the hundred hours i've put into it so far, and I won't be upset at the next hundred I spend either. For $20.99 USD on Steam, its worth every penny.