Earth Defence Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space Review

There are a number of game series that have earned a reputation for being complicated and in-depth. The Final Fantasys and Fallouts of this world are games that you can sink hours into mastering the subtle nuances of and still find something new every time you turn them on. They are the Peter Jackson of gaming. Complicated, intellectual and require some deep thought sometimes to get the most entertainment, but ultimately worth it. Sometimes though, you don’t want to watch the 12 hour super-extended director’s cut of Lord of the Rings, and you just stick on a Michael Bay film and marvel at all the pretty explosions. Earth Defence Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space (EDF2) is the Michael Bay of gaming. Big, loud, dumb but full of action. Originally released on the PS2 as Global Defence Force and on the PSP as Earth Defence Force 2 Portable, This PS Vita release is aiming to be third-time lucky for the bombastic Japanese shooter.

If you play EDF2 for at least 20 minutes, you will see everything you need to see to work out if you will like the game or not. If you want a lot of deep cerebral stimulation then you’re probably not going to enjoy this game, but to think of that as a bad thing would be to miss the point of what this title does. This is a time-killer game, a game for mindless fun without having to worry about such unnecessary fluff as plots and character development. There’s one thing you need to know: If it moves, shoot it.

In the game, you find yourself in control of an unnamed soldier working with the titular Earth Defence Force. The planet is being invaded by aliens and you have to help destroy them all. The invaders come in various shapes and sizes from giant mech-robots to building sized ants to cute miniature flying saucers.  In each case, they will swarm the level and you have to run around shooting them until you’ve cleared everything in the level. If it sounds simple, that’s because it is, but that’s the beauty of it.

This is a game distilled down to pure essence. The plot is near enough non-existent and there’s not much in the way of game mechanics. The graphics aren’t really anything to write home about either, with very little changed compared to the PS2 original, this sadly includes framerate drops and some mildly irritating pop up throughout. This is marketed as a remake, but it’s hard to see really what was remade. Some better presentation would have been nice here, as we know the Vita is capable of much more.

One touch I thought was very good was that the game now has an English dub. This is something that was missing in the original European releases. Whilst the Japanese version had voiceovers and speech in game, the European version had just background music. That music is still present and evokes the feel of a cheesy monster movie perfectly, just like it always did, but with some English voice acting to complement it now.

There’s a huge amount of satisfaction in blasting hordes of enemies away in massive waves. Watching UFOs fall from the sky one by one and explode at your feet is hugely cathartic. Environments are all destructible too, so there’s no need to worry about buildings and walls getting in the way, just blow them up!  It all comes in brief five minute missions too, which is ideal for a Vita game. Mobile gaming is at its best when you can play for short periods of time. If you’re playing this out and about while you’re on a train, the last thing you want is to be frantically hunting for a save point just as your station approaches.

These short levels also mean that playing levels over isn’t a chore, which is good because you will need to. There are three classes in the game that you can switch between at will, but each class has their own weapon sets to choose from and these come as drops from baddies. This means that if you want to keep the levels of weapons up to the standard of the later levels for all classes, then you’re going to need to go back and do a little grinding of the earlier levels to get the weapon drops that you want. It’s not an ideal method but it does give a reason for a replay of the game and as each class has very different fighting techniques, there’s still some variation in gameplay when playing the same level with a different class.

Overall EDF2 isn’t going to be winning any awards for originality or storyline, but it is just as much fun to play as it was on the PS2. It’s unfortunate that this is because not much has been changed as this means that if you have the PSP version, then there isn’t really much of a need to upgrade to this one. If you don’t have one of the original versions though, then this is worth picking up for some no-frills shooting fun.