Earth Defense Force 2017 is a sub par game that squeezes past with mediocre graphics, a barely passable frame rate, terrible controls, a rather useless camera, monotonous gameplay and a story on a string. I absolutely love it.

There is something inherently attractive to me about mid budget games. They often just take risks and use strange ideas, themes and concepts that bigger budget games with stocks and shareholders just won't. The by committee game design I call it, focus tested into bland goo. Earth Defense Force is the opposite of this. What makes this game so fun in spite of itself is it's low budget B movie like atmosphere. Like all enjoyable B movies the bad parts of the game are almost entertaining because they are expected. The premise of EDF 2017 is a simple one. You take control of a nameless generic looking trooper in the Storm 1 squad of the Earth Defense Force. This global force was put together when alien ships were discovered to be heading towards us, and on the off chance they weren't friendly, we stand prepared.

Like all good B movie inspired entertainment, the enemies are cheesy beyond compare. Initially the UFO's will drop giant ants that crawl up buildings and spit bright orange acid at you and your fellow EDF team mates. But as the game goes on the units vary to giant robots straight from the 1950 toy market, as well as smaller space ships and 50 feet long spiders. Boss fights are some of the more interesting part of the game, with 4 legged fortress's and giant mecha-dinosaurs who seem like lost relatives of Godzilla. The sense of scale with these skyscraper tall monsters is hugely impressive, though it can create lag at times. Though that almost feels like a feature on theme with it's budget and setting.

You get a huge variety of weapons to choose from, the scenery of everything is destructible. Hitting a building with a rocket launcher to level it to the ground trying to hit an ant? well it's just collateral damage in defense of Earth! Hilarious, entertaining and doesn't take itself seriously. The co-op play and the optional challenge of the difficulty levels gives the game some replay value despite it's repetition. 2017 had split screen co-op for extra explosions and extra lag but beating it on Inferno difficulty after a lot of grinding and trialing weapons with a friend was a real challenge we enjoyed though not for everyone that's for sure.

This was the first game in the series I played. I bought it on a whim as it was cheap for a new game at the time. They were originally part of a Japanese budget line of titles though the newer games are more full price launches. I've played several titles in the series since, hundreds of hours on them with Earth Defense Force 5 to play with a friend in the new year ready. There is something inherently magical about your first time though and despite latter games being bigger, with more enemies, classes, vehicles and destruction it's this one that I have the most fond image of the series of.

Regardless Earth Defense Force is a highly entertaining series whether you start here or elsewhere. Flawed yes, reeking of cheese and tacky biscuits yes, but a blast all the same.