Earth Defense Force 2025 review: kill 'em all

Earth Defense Force 2017, its predecessor, appeared seven years ago on Xbox 360, a console that had yet to hit critical mass. Last year, EDF experienced deja vu in the form of a polished update of 2017 available exclusively on the PlayStation Vita. Now we're here at the beginning of the a new generation of video game hardware and it seems, yet again, Earth Defense Force is set to walk on the stage of an empty house. I sincerely hope that's not the case, because boy does it put on one hell of a show.

Earth Defense Force 2025, now available on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 — and notably absent on their successors — is more akin to a reimagining than sequel. Even in contrast with the iterative culture of video games, the improvements to 2025 feel like catch-me-ups, grafting the back-of-the-box bullet points expected of a modern shooter onto a series half a decade behind the times.

Where Earth Defense Force 2017 had local multiplayer, 2025 has local and online. 2017 had one playable character; 2025 has four character classes. The more, more, more design direction is crass and obvious and just so happens to align perfectly, like some freak cosmic event, with a franchise about blowing the shit out of everything in sight. Decadence, meet decadence.

Of the new classes, the Air Raider and Fencer add some creative layers to playing cooperatively with friends. The Air Raider is a support class that mostly deploys bizarre and limited weapons, calling in rocket-festooned vehicles, which are still one of the series's less pleasurable components. Tanks, mechs and choppers are all here, but they're just not that easy or fun to pilot. Not when you're already a human war machine. The Fencer is a heavily armored class that struggles to navigate the giant maps, but can carry four weapons, which makes it a boon for the sort of people who have the patience to build a LEGO house but also want to smash it with a hammer.

But the third class, the Wing Diver, is a legitimate improvement on the standard soldier of the original game. We first saw the Wing Diver in the PS Vita port of 2017, but this is the first time that the ability to fly has served the overall game. Originally, buildings existed in Earth Defense Force as oversized cover and cannon fodder. But with the Wing Diver the cityscape serve the tactical purpose of distancing the player from the flood of beasts.

Though repetitive and protracted and bookended by glitches and shoddy load screens, EDF still conjures some of the most enjoyable action on any console. The game is a true sandbox, with dozens of collectible weapons revealing themselves with each mission. My love for EDF might cloud my mind, but some games are so interesting, so weird, so purposefully off that their beauty is in their flaws.

Take for example the comically inadequate weapons that unlock early in the Earth Defense Force 2025, weapons that are preposterously powerful but only shoot a couple feet or maybe they detonate in a blast radius that will kill a hundred bugs — and you, too. They're miserable weapons, and yet they tease out the potential of better, improved options, they motivate further play, encouraging experimentation and improvisation. There's a thrill in setting personal restraints, using weapons designed to stink. Sometimes you'll be surprised to discover a close-range weapon in the hands of the flying Wing Diver works smashingly against aircraft. Suddenly, a stage that felt dull on foot, becomes a breathless aerial battle, one person fighting through a cloud of alien ships.