Review: Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space

Honey I Shrunk the Kids 2: Buggernauts

Two words. Giant. Bugs.

Also giant spaceships, giant kaiju, and giant explosions. If you’re looking for campy sci-fi action on your Vita look no further than Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space.

Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space (PlayStation Vita, PS TV)
Developer: Sandlot
Publisher: XSEED Games
Released: December 8, 2015
MSRP: $29.99

If you’re like me, you’ve played every EDF game and know what to expect when it comes to them, and this iteration doesn’t break from the formula. In this enhanced remake of the second game in the EDF series — originally only released for PS2 in Japan and Europe — you’ll be playing as one of three classes: Infantry, Pale Wing, or Air Raider.

Infantry is your basic soldier that uses weapons you’d find in most modern day armed forces: assault rifles, sniper rifles, rocket launchers and so on. Pale Wing, on the other hand, is a female soldier with a jetpack and futuristic weapons; she moves slowly and is mostly useless on the ground while being nimble in the sky. Air Raider is a new addition that wasn’t in the original release, and it mostly uses deployable weapons and plays more of a support role.

In my playthrough, I sampled each class before decided to stick with the familiar infantry, as they just seem like an all around fit when playing solo while Pale Wing and Air Raider might fair a bit better in multiplayer. While up to four player online co-op is available, I was not able to test the functionality before release, so I can only assume the other classes fair a bit better online.

Each of the three classes have their sets of weapons that are unlockable via pickups randomly dropped by enemies. This mixed with the six available difficulty levels adds a lot of replayability, on top of completing the game with each class; if you’re a completionist, you’ll get your $29.99 worth here. 

Initially, I was concerned this being a port of the second game in the series would mean more repetition and less variety, but I was pleased to find out that wasn’t the case. EDF2 has the best collection of enemies of any of the other games in the series. Aside from giant ants and spiders there are rolly pollies, flying saucers, centipedes, and daddy long legs-like walkers that are taller than skyscrapers.

While this doesn’t completely quash the repetitiveness of killing giant bugs and UFOs every stage, it certainly helps. Even the notorious slowdown that the EDF series is infamous for is mostly missing. In my playthrough, I experienced maybe two or three instances of choppiness due to the amount of enemies on screen, which surprising considering the Vita isn’t exactly a powerhouse. 

It isn’t all explosions and sunshine, though. Most levels offer a tank, a speeder bike, and a helicopter, all of which control terribly. The tank is slow and clunky, the speeder bike is too fast to be controllable and useful, and the helicopter’s guns aren’t strong enough to be of use if you’re lucky enough to hit something with them, and flying too high causes lots of pop in. On top of the terrible driving controls, the aiming just plain sucks for vehicles, mostly due to lack of crosshairs, which are provided when outside the vehicle. 

Some stages take place in the city at night, where basically everything is pitch black (to a fault) other than windows in skyscrapers that shine brightly with a fuzzy glow around them, which just looks plain awful. Otherwise, graphically EDF2 looks like basically every other game in the series, which isn’t surprising considering some of the levels feel almost identical if they aren’t actually identical. 

Aside from those issues, the main problem I had with the game was some enemies not being aggressive, instead opting to hang around in the far reaches of maps. Nearly every level’s objective is ‘murder all the bugs’ and there was at least four or five times I had to either hunt and search to find the last enemies hiding spot, or slowly walk across the whole map. While tedious, these walks weren’t the end of the world for me, just minor inconveniences of my fun-filled destructive romp.

Earth Defense Force 2 may not be a brand new game per se, but has enough original content to keep it feeling fresh alongside the other recent releases in the series. With a lot of replayability, online four-player co-op, and a budget price tag it is easy to recommend to Vita owners looking for some campy over-the-top action in spite of its flaws. 

EDF! EDF! EDF! EDF! EDF!

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}