Vicious Cycle – D3 Publisher – Namco Bandai – Xbox 360/PS3 – Out Now
Sequel to the 2007 budget title, Earth Defense Force 2017, Insect Armageddon carries on the B-movie carnage in a wonderfully SyFy movie of the week sort of way.
The basic plot is that giant bugs are attacking Earth, and you are part of a team tasked with eradicating this menace. And that really is it. Set in the streets of ‘New Detroit’, the game pretty much consists of running around shooting the crap out of huge ants and spiders. It all sounds very monotonous and one-trick. Which it is really, but there is something about this game that keeps you hooked. Maybe it’s the fully destructible city, or maybe it’s the fact you get to run around blasting the crap out of humongous insect hordes.
Starting out, you get the choice of 4 character classes (Trooper – all rounder, Jet – has a jet pack but takes damage easily, Tactical – another all rounder but with stronger armour and deployable gun turrets – and Battle– heavy artillery and extremely armoured but very slow) and basic weapons. As you play, you upgrade your class and the weapons by levelling up. How much you level up depends on how many points you finish each mission with. The higher the level, the better type of weapon available. The weapons vary from assault rifles, grenade launchers, shotguns, missile launchers and more.
The gameplay starts with you being dropped into an ant infested section of the city, which you have to blast your way through to retrieve intel for your ops division. In fact, that appears to be what the majority of the missions are like. The further through the missions and chapters you get, the more enemies you are introduced to. As is usually the case, the further you get, the harder they fall. Starting off with giant ants, spiders are then added to the mix followed by ticks (which explode spraying you with acid), then an even bigger tick, which carries the smaller ones around. And that’s before starting on the aerial nasties hovering around. Not only that, you can add giant robots to the monster madness as well. The further you progress, the more of the bigger and badder enemies you encounter. However, towards the end, the levels just feel like arena battles, where you have to take down wave after wave of enemies before you can progress. As well as the abundance of weapons at your disposal, there are mech’s and vehicles at various stages in the game, shaking up the gameplay somewhat.
In hindsight, this game shouldn’t work. It’s basically the same thing over and over, yet there is something ultimately satisfying, ploughing down wave after wave of 50’s sci-fi beasties! Add to that, the ability to level entire buildings, this accumulates to quite a satisfying shooter. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its down sides. For a start, you are in the same urban areas throughout the games, aside from a few rides in a drop ship, there is no variety to the locations. As well as that, there are only 15 levels altogether, 3 chapters – 5 missions in each – which accumulate to a few hours game time in total – maybe 4-5 hours – of single player campaign. This time is probably reduced significantly when playing on-line or split-screen, as although the friendly AI is a little more helpful than the average game, it still isn’t that great.
As well as on and off-line campaign, there is a survival mode, where you have to fight off wave after wave of enemy for as long as possible, which really isn’t that much different from a lot of the latter campaign missions. The look of the game has certainly improved over its predecessor, yet given the time period between them, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. However, I seem to recall the insects in the previous version having a more realistic movement to them, making them look creepier. Saying that, this is a budget title about giant creepy crawlies destroying the Earth, so realism isn’t really a factor one would be looking for.
As mentioned, the main campaign is very short for a game these days, but given the cheap price of the game this can be forgiven. Perfect for a cheap pick up and play shooter, which will be even more fun on co-op. One thing is for sure, this is a very hectic game, with lots going on at once. Buildings collapsing, robots blowing stuff up, giant spiders jumping around, it can get overwhelming and probably a bit too much for the casual gamer perhaps.
If you’re a fan of crappy made for TV creature features and/or the utter chaos of Sega’s Vanquish, then this should definitely provide a good few hours of solid entertainment. It’s good, cult gaming fun, and while it’s no Deadly Premonition (a budget gem which was a very pleasant surprise, check out our review!), it’s definitely a cheap thrill.
Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon is awarded Rating: 
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