Instead of leveling a character, you level your armor. I have my Battle Armor leveled to Rank 6 (with 8 being the max). It takes more XP to go from 5-6 than it does to go from 1-5. Fortunately, the harder difficulties give exponentially more XP.
There are 3 chapters, each containing 5 missions. They will take you around 15-25 minutes each. There is a surprising amount of variety in the missions search for missing soldiers, blow up giant anthills, find a downed aircraft, etc.
The minimap shows your character's position, your 2 allies' positions (either friends or bots after you beat the game once, you have the option of playing without bots), health drops, waypoints, and weapon drops (minibosses and bosses drop randomized weapons).
The loot is very enticing. In addition to leveling your armor (which provides you with more HP, class-specific abilities, etc.), there are around 200 weapons to purchase (ranked 1-8), and 107 weapons that are randomly dropped from bosses. After a playthrough on Normal difficulty, I had 22 of the 107. And unlike the recent Dungeon Siege III, the difference in loot (weapons) is massive and noticeable. A single upgrade to a weapon might double the damage, increase the turn speed, decrease reload times, and feature zoom as well. It's a great system.
One of the final bosses dropped a weapon called the "Air Tortoise." It fires 1 slow rocket and takes 10 seconds to reload. However, that rocket does 9,999 damage. Good stuff.
You're looking at 5-6 hours for the initial playthrough, and 50-70 minimum to level up all classes and get the best drops (and finish on Inferno!).
Pros:
Lots of incentives to grind levels and gear, and it does not get old quickly.
3-player campaign co-op that scales difficulty and 6-player Survival mode (although your class is locked to Trooper for Survival).
Decent mission variety.
Ridiculously huge bosses. Like, square-mile big.
Easy on Normal and hard as hell on Inferno. Something for everyone.
Mechs, Turrets, Tanks
Only 40 bucks!
Cons:
All missions take place in the same city, and while there is some difference as to the districts they take place in, it's still a whole lot of "same" looking streets and buildings.
The graphics aren't great at all, but it's a budget title, there's a ton of stuff crawling and blowing up all over the place, and the framerate is very smooth (I'd rather have that, in all honesty).
The first half of too many missions basically tasks you with killing 300-400 ants until the good stuff gets started (again, not that bad considering they'll drop a ton of health to get you ready for the bigger bugs).
While the bosses are huge and awesome (and aesthetically different), they all have the same weakness. After you kill the first boss, you know how to kill them all, and I'll bet that you could guess even before you play the game, haha.
Anyways, I'd recommend this game to pretty much anyone, but especially people who enjoy...
Too Human
Starship Troopers
Left 4 Dead
Massive destruction and explosions galore
Click Here For Most Helpful Customer Reviews >>
Earth Defense Force 2017 became a cult-classic due to the excessive, B-movie style cheesiness combined with the solid shooter mechanics and huge variety of weaponry, ranging from hilariously useless (firecrackers) or unnecessarily dangerous weapons (Air Tortoise), to the incredibly powerful weapons (Goliath). When I found out a sequel was in the making, I got all giddy, my prayers had been answered! All they needed to do was add online co-op, what could go wrong?Quite a lot apparently.
I want to start right off the bat and say that Insect Armageddon is not a bad game, and in some ways it improves upon it's predecessor, most notably by not only including online co-op, but upgrading it from only 2-players to 4. Technically speaking, Insect Armageddon looks much better than EDF 2017, and it adds several new types of enemies for more variety (my favorite being the wasps zipping around the battlefield shooting acid at you). The turrets and vehicle segments feel more fleshed out and much more fun overall than EDF 2017's frustratingly awkward vehicle controls.
Unfortunately though, I feel like the sequel gets more wrong than right, and fails to recognize many of the aspects that made Earth Defense Force 2017 a uniquely enjoyable action game.
The biggest disappointment comes from the "impact" of the weaponry. As I described in my EDF 2017 review, the impact of the weapons is one of the most enjoyable aspects of Earth Defense Force. It's not just about bigger explosions and higher stats, it's about seeing those insects rocket into the sky. In Insect Armageddon, the corpses vaporize almost immediately after killing them. So while the insects may start to fly into the sky, they vaporize before flying 10 feet in the air most of the time, so the impact is not as apparent, so killing all the bugs starts to feel more like a chore. It's not just the bug enemies either, in fact, many of the other enemies are much worse. The Hektors, once towering robots that recoil and bend and contort from every powerful blast of a shotgun or rocket launcher, now are agile robots that run around somewhat aimlessly, and have no reaction to your supposedly powerful weaponry. I actually thought I was doing something wrong in the first level, as my attacks elicited no reaction and it took so long to kill I honestly thought I was doing no damage. But I did end up killing it, and the result was nothing but disappointment, compared to the epic explosive awesomeness of destroying hektors in EDF 2017.
The b-rate movie corniness is also a bit annoying. While it tended to grate on the nerves a tad in EDF 2017 as well, it felt a bit easier to forgive, as the corniness felt genuine. In Insect Armageddon, the game knows all too well of its corniness, and almost attempts to be a parody of itself, except that it's not quite clever enough to pull it off. It's a bit like the latest Duke Nukem. It tries a bit too hard to make fun of itself, and ends up appearing insecure rather than funny.
Unlike in 2017, in Insect Armageddon there's 4 distinct classes to choose from. At first I thought this was to the game's benefit, as it gives the game a bit more variety. The classes include a zippy speed-based character with a jetpack, a standard soldier type most similar to the trooper in EDF 2017, a support character that can drop a turret, and a hulking heavy armor type with a shield and area of effect explosion attack. The reason why the classes fail in Insect Armageddon is because, by comparison, none of the classes are half as fun as the "Jet" class. Why bother running around when you can slide across the ground twice as fast and jet rooftop to rooftop instead? The heavy armor seems particularly useless, as the shield and area of effect attack do little to make up for the agonizingly slow movement speed and lacking ability to dodge attacks. I think Insect Armageddon would have been much better if it had focused solely on the Jet class, and just focused on more and more weapons.
But worse than the imbalance of classes is the requirement to level up each class, and how all the weapons are now split up. In EDF 2017, it was frustrating to keep picking up weapons you already have, but in Insect Armageddon this problem is made much worse, as you frequently get weapons for classes that you're not playing, and even if you do get weapons for your class, there's a good chance you won't be a high enough level to use them yet. And by the time you level yourself up and try it out, disappointment sets in when you realize it's just a marginal improvement over a weapon you're already using. The variety of weapons is simply lacking in Insect Armageddon. While it does have the occasional charming and quirky weapon, most weapons are just improved versions of previous weapons. There's also far fewer "niche" weapons that work great against specific enemies (such as the flamethrowers in 2017), making for less strategy. Having to level up classes is also detrimental to the online co-op. If you don't keep up with your friends and find yourself several levels lower, it's like bringing a pea shooter to a nuke party.
Another disappointing aspect comes from the scale of the game. EDF 2017 captured a truly epic scale, and while you would run into the occasional invisible wall, that was usually just a problem with a handful of levels. Insect Armageddon, however, has more invisible walls than you can count. Even if you're going "where you're supposed to go" you'll more than likely run into plenty of invisible walls. This is a huge problem, as a big part of EDF comes from dodging like crazy and getting a comfortable distance between you and your enemies to properly launch huge explosions. In Insect Armageddon, I died many times unfairly simply because I was dodging and retreating from giant spider web attacks only to find myself cornered against an invisible wall. This problem feels exponential when playing as the Jet class. That skyscraper right there, that one you can scale, but the one right next to it you can't. Why? Invisible wall.
In the end, Insect Armageddon is a fairly fun co-op shooter with both online and split-screen options. There's not too many like it, and fans of co-op games will likely have a blast in spite of its many flaws. It just feels like this title could have been so much more, if only the developers had recognized why EDF 2017 was so successful. The grand scale, the enormous weapon variety, the satisfying sound and impact of your over-the-top weapons is far more important than improved graphics, classes, and cheesy one-liners.
Best Deals for Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon - Xbox 360
As a follow-up I've played it through a second time as a different character and while brief it's intense and fun deserving of FOUR Stars many improvements but so brief a time it takes to complete compared to the originals 53 levels but fun and challenging as hell despite it's shortcomings.As a huge fan that has played and completed EDF 2017 at 100% four times solo without cheating over the past two years I anxiously awaited this version. I'm not saying it's bad but let's be honest this baby feels absolutely NOTHING like EDF 2017 and it lacks the grandness of scale with its variety of landscapes across 53 LEVELS did you get that? 53 Levels with five degree's of difficulty and it took me over 4 months my first time to do a 100% completion of everything.
I played this game over two nights perhaps 8 hours total and the game was over and I had no idea that I'd just played the final Boss Level of Chapter 3 Mission five and in fact I thought I was saving wrong and kept trying to get to a new level and played the thing three times before I did a search for a walkthrough and found I actually had finished and to my shock after Three Chapters of five missions that was it? That was a WTF moment!
It's not all bad, it's prettier visually, there are some creative creatures that seem much harder to take down as it's seems my weapons are always to weak and sometimes the firefights can be intense as hell but it simply has no feel of EDF 2017 what's in your hands "the controller" feels nothing at all whereas the old 2017 you could feel the impact of the spider webs, the splashes of acid and the explosiveness of the weapons in your HANDS to where you'd swear the controller may pop out of your hand and I cannot feel any of that with this game, literally the tactile feel of 2017 is VOID on this game.
Also, the landscapes are a rinse and repeat and you don't truly interact with the landscape like 2017 where you could walk up the skyscrapers and battle from rooftops from a distance or battle within the highway tunnel from one side from the beach to the other gully and within that same tunnel and use the immense landscape in your strategy and while the enemies can be huge the landscape lacks that visual appeal or feel. While the mechanics of vehicles were bad in 2017 and that is much improved I can't help but feel during those 15 missions that I'm playing the same mission over and over go to a waypoint and wait to battle over and over again. 2017 53 levels gave huge variety even if much of the Japanese landscape was replicated many different strategies were required for survival.
While there's supposed to be over 300 weapons they are really cheap at giving them out and the dang Menu system is confusing as hell compared to 2017. So far I have no weapons that greatly impress me at all at normal level especially since I've been playing Borderlands GOTY for 8 months and addicted to it's fantastic first class weaponry and it took me months of constantly playing it to finish it Solo 100% with the exception of Crawmaxx. This has no replay value or timing that could come close to Borderlands addictive weapon system where there are over 17 million possible.
Recently bought Duke Nukem and hated it no matter how long it takes I could care less but EDF IA is fun and interesting but don't expect to have any feel whatsoever to the classic 2017 and if you want a value and kick ass fun then get yourself a copy of Borderlands GOY with the downloads and have months of fun instead of 8-10 hours.
Though there are a number of improvements to the original to me they get a "F" for migrating a terrific corny classic but forgot to migrate the FEEL and FUN of the corny original that could provide months or in my case two years and now I have an urge to dust off 2017 and give it a whirl with a fresh start since each time again it can be as hard as hell as you earn your weaponry and at least they let you know the game is over by running the credits this damn game ran no credits and I played the final chapter over and over again thinking I screwed up the Save because it wouldn't let me go beyond Chapter 3 Mission 5.
Three Chapters??? Who are they kidding? A single DLC from Borderlands runs longer than 8 hours and they sell for $10 or less. What a RIP unless you get it in a bargain bin or resale disk or rental. Enjoy just don't expect EDF 2017 this is definitely NOT from the Japanese studio. Disappointed but will still give it a 3 star for its improvements and intense firefights as a FPS but if I were rating it as being EDF 2017 sequel it would be a big fat ZERO Stars!!!
Honest reviews on Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon - Xbox 360
Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon (EDF:IA) is a silly, silly game. There's hints of "plot" and "storyline," but honestly they're just small bits of string loosely tying the missions together. Is the fact that the "plot" seems like it was written by a five year-old a detriment? Not really. In fact, around Mission: 2, Chapter 3, it even feels like the writers have called it a day and are just messing around just to have fun.That's what EDF is it's a silly, fun game that doesn't take itself seriously.
You are a human with a wide array of guns. You blow up bugs and robots. Sometimes you have a friend to blow up bugs and robots with. That's really about as deep as the game gets.
Good:
Mindless fun. Point, shoot and go.
Gets better when playing with friends.
Accidentally killing your friends is fun.
Does not require a huge time commitment to get rewards. Yes, getting level 8 in all of the armors will take a long time, but even jumping from level 1 to 4 isn't a huge commitment and the improvements for each level are pretty noticeable.
Each mission is short and only requires about a 30-40 minute time commitment.
Good-to-great level of replay value the leveling, the purchasing of new weapons the "grindy" aspect of the game wouldn't keep me coming back; rather it's the fact that the game's fun value jumps exponentially when playing with friends.
Bad:
Very repetitive. As many have mentioned, there's only 15 total levels (as well as survival and "remix" mode), and most of the missions feel regurgitated just add more and bigger enemies.
This game will make your XBox cry. When you take specific weapons (mostly the ones with contrails) and add tons of enemies and buildings exploding/crashing, EDF explodes your XBox. There are literally missions where launching a grenade in a location where it can take down a handful of buildings will drop your framerate to something along the lines of 2 seconds per frame (not frames per second). This happens in several locations both in single player but more noticeably in multiplayer. It happens so often that I think they didn't quite code the game to the XBox's abilities correctly.
The bot AI is horrible. You will be screaming obscenities at Cyrus and Oldman (the two generic AI bots). On several occasions, with zero enemies on radar, both Cyrus and Oldman have shot a rocket into the side of my head for no apparent reason. They will shoot you in the back, blow you up, and generally not only be useless but worse be a detriment. The game gives you the option to turn off bots, and really if it wasn't for the fact that the bots will count as "live" players and rez you, they would not be worth having around.
Ticks.
Conclusion:
Buy it if you have friends to play with (who bought their own copy). When played single-player it's not nearly as much fun and the grindy, repetitive aspect will probably quickly whittle away any fun you have with the game. If you're deciding to play it only as a single-player, you probably won't understand why people like this game as much as they seem to.
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon - Xbox 360
Earth Defense Force 2017 is among my all time favorite games. It is elegantly simple. Almost nothing gets in the way of gameplay, no stupid NPCS, no artsy fartsy cinematics, no pointless puzzles, no objectives. All you did was pick two weapons and kill enemies.This one on the other hand, introduces a host of crappy non-gameplay mechanics, annoying objectives, worse enemies, worse controls, worse weapons, and overall is trying to be too much 'better' than its predecessor.
The blame however, falls on you people. You who will not accept a game unless it comes in ultra-high res triple-antialiased multi-layer textures with quick time events, objectives, and all the other markings of a generic 2000s shooter.
No comments:
Post a Comment