If you’ve ever wanted to shoot up some giant bugs, Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain, by developer Yuke’s and publisher D3 Publisher, is the game for you. The game puts you right into the action with little tutorial. Whether that’s good or bad will probably depend on your experience with first person shooters, but I thought the entire game was very intuitive.
The game starts with an alien invasion, and as one of the members of the Earth Defense Force (EDF), you’re tasked with destroying the mothership. Things go awry as the ship releases a large pulse. You slowly regain control to become the only fighter left on the battlefield and, after defeating the mothership, the hero of Earth. You awake seven years later. Your efforts helped stave off an all-out invasion of Earth the first time around, but now the EDF is facing new threats and needs the help of a hero once again. You’re now tasked with eliminating all extraterrestrial beings that threaten the Earth, including anything from giant ants and jumping spiders to giant robots.
As I said earlier, the controls of this game are like any standard first person shooter, so if you’ve ever played any games like this, you’ll have no problem adjusting to the control scheme. The only minor detail that bothered me was that you could only sprint forwards, but sprinting took priority over strafing, whereas most games will cancel your forward sprint if you try to strafe. I mitigated this by just directing my sprint using the mouse. Besides buying additional guns, armor, and health, the main new thing that really spiced up gameplay for me was being able to dodge attacks. By pressing space, instead of jumping like you’d expect, you do a quick dash in the direction you were holding. This allows for extremely tight maneuvers around enemies and makes you feel like a ninja for getting out without any damage. Another thing I should mention is that there’s a setting called “Overdrive” that you can activate once per mission (or at least I couldn’t figure out how to activate it after that) which powers you up for a short time. The most noticeable advantages were shooting and reloading faster, but I’m sure it just makes you stronger overall. Personally, though, I would prefer to just practice at a level until I can beat it with the standard gun set.
The aesthetics of Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain were really nice. Most of the maps seem like wastelands for you to fight in, whether that be an abandoned city or a place somewhere in the desert. (Of course, I can only hope the cities were abandoned…) I found myself always looking forward to a new enemy since the art designs were so unique. The giant spiders and ants were just spiders and ants, but the rest looked great. I have no major complaints here except that the game was a huge load on my GPU, but that is to be expected, I suppose.
Now comes my biggest complaint overall: Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain feels super grindy. For a full priced game like this one ($59.99), I would expect more variety in gameplay across different stages. The game was fun for a little while and satisfying to outsmart an alien AI, but try outsmarting the same enemy on repeat and you’ll understand. Besides adding one new enemy every two or three missions, the enemies just repeat themselves, not to mention each mission itself is usually just a swarm of the same one or two enemies. I suppose I can’t expect so many different enemies, but the way the game is right now, I feel like that’s what’s holding it back. Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain starts off fun, but it needs to stay fun. The core mechanic works as intended, but the advancement necessary as the player progresses feels imperceptible. For now, I would say I don’t recommend this game just because of its price point. It’s fun to pick up and finish a mission or two at a time, but it’s not something you can really sit down and play for hours. Until this game finds a way to make continuous play more engaging, I would say you can probably skip this game.
6/10
Check Out the Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain Trailer:
Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain is available for PlayStation 4 and PC via Steam.
For more information, please visit: https://www.d3p.co.jp/edfir/en/index.html
Steam Review
I am an aspiring game designer looking to explore the philosophy behind game creation. Some of my favorite games include Overwatch, Super Smash Bros, Portal, and Beat Saber.
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