"Are you Scared?" "No. Shut up!"
by Lisa Foiles

Today’s game under scrutiny, The Earth Defense Force 2017, is by far NOT the best game you can buy with your hard-earned cash. However, it IS the best game you can buy with money acquired in some shadier way. It is the first Xbox 360 game I’ve seen that is both a complete waste of time and money, yet an indisputable gem for any gamer’s collection and the best way to blow an entire Saturday afternoon, if for some reason you run out of things to throw at your moving ceiling fan. Because THAT’S that best way to blow a Saturday afternoon.

The plot of Earth Defense Force is a simple one that has happened in real life countless times in Japan. Alien spacecrafts have begun invading Earth by dropping swarms of giant, acid-spitting red and black ants, jumping, web-shooting tarantulas, 50-foot-tall terminator-wannabe robots, and flying TIE fighter-resembling aircrafts, clearly manned by blind drunk monkeys, onto Planet Earth. In response to this catastrophe, a special team has been developed: EDF! EDF! EDF FTW!!!!

Basically, if the movie Starship Troopers was a game, a.) it would suck, and b.) it would WISH, with every fiber of its being, it was Earth Defense Force. You play as a member of the EDF, beginning each mission with a handful of weapons to choose from (as you play through the game, that handful develops into more of a slew). This sounded promising when I first began playing, but then Joel gave me the single greatest piece of advice he has ever given me regarding anything in life. He said, “Use only your rocket launcher. Everything else is worthless.” It’s true, like the time he told me that Jennifer Garner looks like an alien trying to be a man trying to be a woman.

Two words: FRAME. RATE. There is SO much shit going down all the time in this game that the choppiness fluctuates in extremes, from just a tad to WTF-I-CAN-BARELY-SEE. We’re talking colossal explosions every two to eight seconds that cause your controller to nearly vibrate out of your hands. Fortunately, it’s all worth it as you stand there in the streets of Tokyo, or wherever the hell you are, wiping your brow and grinning after taking out fifty alien ants and five skyscrapers with just a few small rockets. Awesome.

Speaking of taking out buildings, that is probably my favorite part of this game. EVERYTHING is destructible. At the beginning of each level, Joel and I pretty much went around leveling the city in order to have a better view of the alien bugs, then laughed heartily when the news reporter claimed the ALIENS were causing the destruction. Silly news reporters and their journalism these days! She must have been from BBC. Anyway, EDF occasionally has to take leave of the city and go underground to the alien ants’ “tunnel lair” to prevent them from breeding. Again, we accomplish this by shooting them in the face with rockets.

Controls are easy. Graphics are what you’d expect from a 360 game like this. Storyline is laughable. The bugs are morons. Your teammates are bigger morons. In fact, at one point in the underground tunnel, I watched in awe as one of my computer-controlled teammates failed to realize that he could not shoot bugs that were on the opposite side of an impenetrable wall, and that it was necessary for him to walk around. So, what did he do? He shot rockets at the wall. Fell down. Lost health. Shot more rockets at the wall. Fell down. Lost health. This repeated until his inevitable death. Looks like he was prevented from breeding, too! Two birds with one rocket! What a good day.

This game is ultra bad and fun as hell. You won’t want to stop playing, even when you've accidentally blown yourself up for the twelfth time in one mission. Keep in mind that it’s definitely more fun to play WITH someone, so before buying this game, work on buying some friends. Wikipedia has a great article on bribery.

Overall Rating: 2 out of 10