Pong and Beyond

254th played so far

Genre: Shoot-Em Up
Platform: Xbox 360
Year of Release: 2007
Developer: Sandlot
Publisher: 3D Publisher

Some games just don’t have things going for them. If it wasn’t for the book, Earth Defense Force 2017 would be a game I skipped. It sounds and feels cheap – the title alone is fairly generic, it’s made by people unknown to me, and the storyline – aliens invade the earth – sounds generic enough that it wouldn’t grab my attention. For heaven’s sake, it features giant ants, how much more cliched can you get?

Still, it’s on the list, which means we want to start paying attention to it. No clue why, but it’s co-op, so if nothing else, it makes for a fun few hours, right?

Our Thoughts

(For the sake of the review this is pretty much how our thoughts went during our first playthrough… minus the swearing… I need to control that)

Here we go. Start the game. Go through the usual motions. New game, two players, sure, all fine. Select two weapons to go in? Yeah, no choice there yet. Still looks fairly standard to be honest – assault rifle and rocket launcher. Cool. Loading explains tanks and such – that’ll be interesting to try and play with.

Starting the game… sure, mostly common controls. Ah, switch weapons, okay. Nothing to shoot though, let’s walk forward. Rocket launcher fired… wait did that building just collapse AWESOME! I think that was meant to be a hospital.

Oh enemies. Wait, what, ant? They’re giant ants? What. The. Hell. Well, we’ll kill them, but it’s odd. Let’s kill a few more. The corpses are a little weird, apparently on death these ants just seize up and become so light that they can be moved by gusts of in-game wind.

I’m done? Not bad, that ended out of nowhere though. What’s next? Upgrades? Hmmm, lots of HP boosts, I suppose that’s useful. And new weapons? Ooooh, let’s see what they’re like. Okay, stats aren’t as great as I was expecting, maybe stick with what I’ve got. What’s the point of an in-game flamethrower if it’s going to be that useless against giant ants, might as well equip myself with a toy snake.

A few more levels of ant killing later, new enemies come in. Or rather, opponents. Ants landing? Take down the UFOs that bring them. Bit annoyingly tricky, but possible. And from there it ramps up to the more awesome enemies. Walking mechs, flyers and such, all more challenging and, well, more awesome than ants.

Right, this game is great to play. Its graphics are middling (looking a generation out of date), gameplay comes down to shooting, with some strategy in the way of staying out of the way, but mostly just killing things and, for fun, blow up buildings. It’s the most fun we’ve had in co-op for quite a while. Sure, the game looks trashy, but it’s awesome.

Final Thoughts

This game is awesome in a way that War of the Monsters made for an awesome fighting game. It’s over the top and is heavy on you being able to blow up whatever the hell you want. It’s menus are slightly reminiscent of Steel Battalion (not a great thing) but on the whole this is basically a pulp fiction game.