Earth Defense Force 6

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There’s a reason I could never join the military and defend our homeworld against all threats, and it’s this: I’m unsure the planet is actually round. How can invaders attack? We’ll just push them off the size of the world! They’ll fall into the cosmos for all eternity! Who needs soldiers when we could just use a bulldozer?! Anyway, let’s pretend the Earth is round – really stretch our disbelief a little – and take a look at Earth Defense Force 6, the latest in a long-running series about defending that blue ball amongst the stars.

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The Earth has faced its share of troubles, but few have been as dangerous as the alien invasion that recently ravaged the planet. Thanks to the efforts of a brave soldier, though, the aliens were pushed back. Humanity can rebuild, slowly but surely clearing out the remnants of the invaders’ forces all the while…or can they? Perhaps there’s more to come? Maybe, just maybe, we’ll need more brave soldiers to step up to the plate and save the planet once again? Nah, couldn’t be.

If you’re unfamiliar, the Earth Defense Force games are essentially third-person takes on old monster movies from the heydays of cinema. The dialogue is cheesy, the monsters are huge, the gore is abundant and the explosions are extra crispy – what more could you want out of a game? With a huge number of missions and difficulty settings to blast through, once this one gets its hooks in you, you just might understand what all the fuss is about. At the very least, you’re bound to have some friends who are up for a little of the EDF series’ beloved multiplayer; rest assured that you can still sing ridiculous marching anthems in concert if you’d like to do so.

The four soldier classes we’ve come to know and love are back in Earth Defense Force 6. The Ranger’s a guy on foot with guns and grenades ready to blast some bugs; he’s your well-rounded option and a great choice for new players. The Air Raider is similar, but he spends a lot less time on foot since he can call in vehicles for mechanized mayhem. These are especially noteworthy since some include co-op functionality so your less well-geared friends can get in on the action.

Wing Divers, meanwhile, are women with jetpacks that afford them a huge degree of mobility, though if they run out of jetpack juice they’re probably toast. It’s important to be careful with a Wing Diver’s weaponry, as some of their blasters run off the same juice and might leave you stranded that much faster. Finally, Fencers are mech-suited soldiers with low mobility (or amazingly high mobility once you get the hang of tricking them around all over the place with weird weapon inputs) and the ability to carry more weapons at once than other soldiers.

The absolute carnage that lies at the heart of the Earth Defense Force series remains as well. Your early weapons, regardless of soldier class, are wholly capable of taking down a building with a single shot and things just spiral from there. As you progress through the campaign you’ll obtain dozens of new implements of destruction, allowing you to customize a solider that suits your playstyle. Assembling just the right array of weapons and unleashing them on an endless tide of alien scum is a great time, one that makes the grind necessary to reach higher difficulty levels feel a lot less tedious.

Make no mistake, though: you’re definitely going to be doing a bit of grinding. Replaying completed missions in order to upgrade your armor and collect new weapons is all but necessary to make progress, plus you’ll have to do a little extra make-up work if you decide to switch soldier classes as they’re going to need their own armor reinforcement to be viable. Often, this is that sort of game that shines when you’re chilling with a podcast on, watching the numbers go up and the gear flow in. Make it to later difficulties, though, and the paradigm shifts to a tense battle against endless hordes of unstoppable enemies. There’s a little bit for everyone, in other words.

Presentation-wise, EDF6 is more of the same, meaning it’s not going to blow your mind outside of its massive sense of scale. EDF6 looks better than the original EDF from the Xbox 360, but just barely, and the real gains over the course of the past decade-ish have mostly been performance-related. Slap this one on a decent PC and it’s going to look like crap, but smooth, silky crap, like Dove chocolate crap or melted butter crap. What am I even talking about? The point is this is a nice-looking game that focuses on fun over frills and manages to run great while doing so.

“Fun over frills” is a pretty good way of summarizing this series as a whole and Earth Defense Force 6 delivers exactly that. Alone or with friends, there’s enough mayhem to go around and keep you playing for hours once you start to vibe with the game. Grab your giant missile launcher, hop in a mech the size of a skyscraper and get to blasting. What are you waiting for? The Earth’s not going to defend itself.