Earth Defense Force 6 - PS5 Review

Earth Defense Force 6 by developer Sandlot Games and publisher D3 Publisher—Sony PlayStation 5 review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher. 

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes.

EDF! EDF! E… D… F… what number now? 

Picking up where EDF 5 left off, EDF 6 starts off rather grim. Taking place after the conclusion of the alien invasion, Earth's Forces didn't exactly get a shiny victory as the cities are in shambles and the aliens and monsters continue to roam its surface. Don't you worry though as that is all about to change. Over. And over. And over again. Welcome to Earth Defense Force: Groundhog Day Edition! 

I had mused with whether or not to talk about the clever time travel paradoxes. But then, as EDF 6 is essentially EDF 5 the what if scenario(s), I felt it would be a disservice not to. In terms of gameplay, EDF5 is almost identical to EDF6 but sprinkled with a few additional details for some character archetypes. Returning are the Ranger, Wing Diver, Air Raider and Fencer who all offer variations on how to approach gameplay. 

Of these archetypes, Rangers will essentially give you an all rounded approach to any situation. Having loaded up EDF 5, here is where one may see the biggest difference. Two main weapons are available, but in addition there's also an option for Grenade or Turrets as a supplementary addition. In EDF 5 it was a second weapon OR one of these. The Wing Divers offer great mobility and the option to take to the skies, but they can't really take a hit. In the same vein, Air Raiders can't take a hit but their summon like abilities are not to be dismissed. Plus they can summon Mechs to the field. Finally the Fencer is hulk of sorts being able to carry four separate weapons but they are slow. Very slow. So it's a good thing that they can take a hit while wielding absurdly large weapons.

So it's with one of these four archetypes, solo or in co-op, that you'll be running, gunning, jumping, crashing, yelling, maybe even swearing as some encounters can seem unfair the first times to say the least. So it's best to bring some cheese as your whine will need it. That said, it's nothing that a bit of adjustment on your part won't fix as maybe your comfy weapon combo just isn't cutting it anymore. And you'll need it with the over 9000! Eerrrrr over 100 stages available. 147 to be exact. 

This is perhaps one of EDF 6’s strongest points, the gameplay loop. Starting off in the future, you’ll soon find yourself retracing your steps from EDF 5. The pacing will be slightly different, but if you’ve recently played, as I did to check the differences, you’ll feel right at home. Where things are different however is that this is not “your” first rodeo. You’ve been at this for a number of times and will be at this for a number of times more as you make it from the present, to the future, and back to the present where things are not quite how you remember them. 

You’re not the only one going back and forth through time. So are the enemies! 

And this is what lets the 147 stage approach work. Does it get tiring at times? Yes, BUT, it also makes up for it by giving you some rather intense climactic events. Repeatedly. New enemies are constantly added into the mix for both future and present time runs making you constantly need to adapt if you want to survive. Obviously as time goes on some of these become nothing more than a nuisance as your gear is improved but EDF 6 finds a way to double down and make your life hell all over again the next mission. But it works well to keep you on your toes.

Where I had issues with EDF 6 is that some of the stages didn’t know when to end. Some were perfect in which if it was going to be a long haul, it would split the encounter in two giving you a needed break to stretch your hands and not worry about losing all of that progress. Seriously, some of these missions go on for so long that you wonder if they’ll end and clearly overstay their welcome. It’s unfortunate that as you continue towards the final and epic conclusion, this happens more often than not. So prepare yourselves as there’s nothing bite sized short of the monsters mandibles here! 

The other perhaps observation more than complaint is that I found myself restricted with the four character archetypes. On top of having reloaded EDF 5, I also reloaded EDF: Iron Rain for comparison. Iron Rain, while targeting more Western audiences with the tone, had a slick gameplay and only one character. This character could be equipped with a variety of gear letting you approach the situation as you needed to instead of being limited to gear types based on archetypes. I think that approach could go much further in the next installment especially when new weapons and armor points (health) are only obtained by pickups IF you can get to them all before the mission ends.

While not perfect, EDF 6 offers up a lot of gameplay to fans of the series and newcomers alike. With the different approach to gameplay taking players on various loops through time, there’s plenty to test your mettle against as you defend your home and prove that the Earth Defense Force is up to the task!

 

Score: 7.5 / 10

 

 

 

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Custom Mech Wars - PS5 Review

Custom Mech Wars by developer and publisher D3 Publisher—Sony PlayStation 5 review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes. 

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EDF! EDF! E…D…F… what? This isn't our latest Earth Defense Force? I could have sworn… 

Welcome to Custom Mech Wars! Brought to you by the amazing minds behind the B Horror Level experience of Earth Defense Force. The world is under attack by a rogue AI picking up any and all mobile suits known as G-Mechs to lay waste to humanity. It's up to you, and potentially your friends if you have them close by, to stop them and save humanity!

If you’ve ever played an Earth Defense Force, you know what you’re in for when it comes to Custom Mech Wars. Forty stages with varying objectives against rising odds as there’s generally only one of you and HORDES of them. For everyone else, the gameplay is that of a third person shooter where you’ll be fighting against a variety of different shaped enemies in cities, deserts, lush green plains and calm looking mountain ranges.

Where Custom Mech Wars is different, is that you aren’t just a human with a weapon. You are a human with a weapon and PLENTY of customizable mechs that can be called into a mission. The Gunpla (Gundam Plamo (Plastic Models)) nerd in me was overjoyed at this as I’m also currently going through Gundam Breaker 3 (physical import as it’s sadly not on our PSN) where you get to customize your own units. Why this is relevant is that while your Gunpla is stuck to the core pieces of Head, Chest, Legs, Arms, Back, Custom Mech Wars? How many of each do you want?

Starting off conservatively and using the starting units as a base, which had your traditional human looking machine, I was soon going right off the rails. Where Custom Mech Wars differs from even that of Armored Core (VI), is that there’s only one limit. No, not imagination, but weight limit. AND imagination. So I had a core, and the core had six arms (four attached to the torso, two attached to the other arms), but this wasn’t enough armament for the foes I was facing, oh no. I continued on with shotguns in the shins, miniguns on the shoulders, and then a giant ray gun sticking out of my chest all before adding on… 16 missiles and 8 rockets to my back. 

Overkill? I wish it had been but more often than not, especially by the end game, it was just enough to get by and even then. I had to summon in my starter mech which I had kept around to pull off a finale worth Gundam 00 when Setsuna comes back in the Exia. So satisfying. Both that final fight and the game as a whole. The mech building itself is rather easy as everything you have access to contains nodes. Each node can have multiple things attached and then moved around an X, Y, Z axis.

So all those missile and rocket launchers? I had them all superimposed onto one another so that visually for me it looked like one and took up less of my screen. All of this can be done with whatever you have on hand. Whether you build new parts with money and materials, or use what you pick up on the field, as long as you have it, you can use it.

In terms of gameplay, it’s smooth. Your mech’s default speed is decent and if you need to go fast? You can boost. If you need to fly a bit, you can also use your boost but through a second button. You have one button to fire any and all weapons that are attached to arms or other body parts. Your firing all goes pretty well towards your target as long as you are aiming at it. Missiles, rockets, and grenades have their own button that can be held down for target locks. Finally, you can also attach automatic weapons that will act independently of you.

In the case of Custom Mech Wars, you’re only as good as your mechs. Yes, plural. Once you’ve built one, you can build a second and a third and a forth and a… you get the point. Each of these can be summoned onto the battlefield to relieve the previous one. Out of ammo? Lost parts? Need a different configuration? Hop on out of one mech and summon down the next. It can take a few seconds so it’s a good thing that you’ve got a bazooka that can potentially freeze an enemy machine, or if you’re not feeling lucky, use your personal boost and zip on right out of there.

If I were to have a complaint, it would be the same one as normal with games in this genre. Unskippable dialog. You can skip the main intro from the mission select and skip the outro to get back to the menu, but at the start of certain missions, especially if you've already done them or you're going back to do them on a harder difficulty, forces you to sit there and wait for the talking to end so that the mission can start. This makes re-doing certain missions a real slog especially if they have the right amount of enemies to grind for new materials. 

Now for an actual serious complaint? With all of the parts and pieces that you’ll be picking up, there’s no ability to either sell scrap gear or even break it down. It just starts to clutter your hanger’s inventory and doesn't actually give you anything in return as there is a lot of junk that you'll be picking up on this wild ride. I wish it could be used to break it down as there is an option to buy pre-built mechs like this gaudy golden wonder shown right above (and new weapons and parts like mentioned above), however, cash isn’t that easy to come by as you’re normally getting all of your new gear through the missions that you take on.

Custom Mech Wars is fun. If you like D3’s Earth Defense Force series you should find plenty to love here. If you like mechs, you should find plenty to love here. And finally if you love customizing the hell out of things and then working on custom paint jobs? You know it, plenty to love here!

Score: 8 / 10

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Maglam Lord - PS4 Review

Maglam Lord by developer Felistella, D3Publisher and publisher PQube—Sony PlayStation 4 review written by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher.

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Maglam Lord is an interesting title brought to us by our friends at Felistella, D3Publisher, and PQube. An interesting take on the action RPG genre by adding a sort of quasi dating sim component to it. Maglam Lord is an interesting title that combines a number of interesting aspects with fun character designs and unique characters, although it does get bogged down a little in some design choices and repetitive combat. Let's take a closer look at what Maglam Lord has to offer.

Maglam Lord puts you in the shoes of the Bladelord Killizerk, a Demonlord who has the ability to create and wield Maglams, a sort of weapon normally restricted to mortals. In a world where Gods and Demonlords are all but immortal, save for these Maglams, the Bladelord Killizerk posed a threat to the world. The Gods and Demons struck an alliance to eliminate Killizerk. After being beaten, Killizerk wakes up in a house and by their retainers grandkid, only to be told that Gods and Demons no longer exist in the world, and that they are the last of their kind. Labelled as an "endangered species", they then need to find a way to recover their mana in order to regain their original power.

Essentially the Bladelord, whose gender you can select when starting a new game, uses too much energy to fight themselves, so they turn to their authority over blades to turn themself into a weapon, which is then wielded by a partner. When the partner defeats a monster, the Bladelord can then absorb the mana to replenish their strength. These partners are your possible romancing interests, and for your information no, it isn't gender restricted. You can check out how much your partners like you at the "Love Dojo", where you'll also be going on your dates, once your affection reaches a certain benchmark and you've progressed far enough in the story.

The dates are pretty basic in nature, where you just select a location and the date proceeds on its own. That selection is then removed from the list of dating spots and you move on to the next. It is possible to max everybody's affection and view their dating scenes, so no worries there. Although there is one character who is missable, so be aware of that. No seriously, I would've had the platinum on my first run if it weren't for literally only this fact. Super frustrating.

When you decide to head out into the field, you'll be sent to an area where your goal is either to collect a set number of items, kill a specific enemy, or kill a set number of a certain enemy type. The fields are separated into smaller zones, where you can spot the enemies roaming around, as well as shiny points on the ground which you can pick up for crafting materials and the occasional consumable item. Sometimes when you walk into an area, the exits will be locked until you beat a certain enemy wandering the field, but these are just standard battles, so you shouldn't have too much trouble with them.

At certain locations in the field there are these sort of dimensional doors that will act as sort of "camps". At these camps, you will get a full heal, as well as access to the shop and the ability to swap characters, as well as your weapon forging ability. Once you're all set, you can head out into the field again. While in the field you can still change equipment, so don't worry if you forgot to equip your weapons!

Weapon forging is pretty basic: collect enough of three different materials, craft weapon, and you're done. After crafting you can put decorations on your weapons, such as decals or actual attachments, or even full cosmetic changes. These decorations aren't just for show though, as they can increase your stats or confer skills to your weapons, such as increased damage from swords. Weapons are available in rarities from A, S, SS, LGD, and each increase in rarity reflects an increase in base stats on the weapon. You can also upgrade the rarity on a weapon with a lower base, but it will require better materials. The hardest part of making weapons is finding the right decoration when you amass a huge roster of them, although considering how bad the drop rates can be sometimes, fetching the materials can be quite a pain.

There are a few things to note about weapons though. Since all enemies have their own weapon type weaknesses, you are encouraged to bring one of each type of weapon with you. Now, the first thing you may notice is that actually equipping weapons is dumb. Basically, you have to unequip a weapon first, and then use the unequip button again on the new weapon to equip it. Kind of dumb, right? The second thing you may notice is that the element symbol and text don't match up. Use the weapon name to determine actual element, because a thunder axe isn't actually going to do ice damage like the flavour text states. On the note of text typos, the game can't spell naïve, so there's that too.

So now that you're all prepped it's time to go into combat. When encountering an enemy in the field, you enter a side scrolling type battle mode, where you can move left and right on a plane, jump, attack, use skills and items, and block. By landing uninterrupted hits against an enemy (blocking saves your counter), you can increase a chain combo that will multiply your money and exp after battle. Enemies have different weakness and patterns, and bosses can have some more unique moves, so it's always a good idea to learn when to guard, especially against any pesky ranged attacks. Once you've won, you can earn materials for crafting, equipment, decorations, or gallery items, depending on the enemy. Don't worry if you lose though, as you can simply just retry the fight.

Unfortunately, despite how I enjoyed the combat and exploration at the start, as the game wears on, so does your patience. If you bother to do all the optional quests, you will quickly find you keep returning to the same areas over and over again, fighting the same enemies, just as palette swaps with increased stats. Considering how bad the drop rates seem to be for select items (although that may just be me), you may find yourself spending a lot of time entering and leaving areas over and over to get the enemies to respawn so you can harvest what you need. When you add in that the quest selection screen will show you what enemies appear, and whether or not you've seen all their drops, spending the time to farm the equipment and decoration drops will see you extremely overpowered by the end of the game. Seriously, I think I was almost ten levels above the suggestion. Since the battles become rather trivial, Maglam Lord loses a lot of its driving interest at that point unfortunately.

With a game that has a widely likable cast of unique characters, plenty of dialogue options to choose from, ranging from humorous to cruel, Maglam Lord has a lot more in terms of character presentation, story, and dialogue. Throughout my entire first playthrough it was always interesting to see what the characters would do or how they would react to my choices. Throw in some comedic points to keep the story from getting too serious and you've got a really good recipe while it's going on. During my second playthrough I chose the opposite gender, and while the responses you can choose are largely the same, there are some subtle differences between the genders, which is interesting, although probably not worth warranting another playthrough unless you're also going for the platinum because you missed the one character.

A few miscellaneous aspects I'd like to bring to light are the music design choices, item exchange, and how the new game plus feature is handled. For the music design, while the background music is largely good, although not particularly outstanding, each character has their own battle theme when you're using them, instead of there being a generic battle theme, which I found a nice touch. Item exchange allows you to give up some materials you've collected in exchange for items you usually can't get anywhere else, or are rather rare, although there is a limit to the number of times you can make exchanges. On the subject of new game plus, I was rather disappointed in the fact that nothing carries over, and instead you just get some "bonuses" that I found absolutely no use in. It's a little disappointing after beating the last boss and starting a "new game plus" that it's basically the same as a normal playthrough.

Summary

Overall, Maglam Lord had a lot of potential that it just didn't fully capitalize on. While characters and dialogue are done really well, the combat that becomes tedious contrasting against some arbitrarily powerful or annoying bosses can be frustrating. Most enemies are simply palette swaps, including bosses that are just large normal enemies, and an annoying grind for materials at times really serve to slow the game down. Maglam Lord certainly isn't bad, but it isn't all it could be, either.

Score: 7 / 10

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Earth Defense Force: World Brothers - PS4 Review

Earth Defense Force: World Brothers by developer YUKE'S and publisher D3 Publisher—Sony PlayStation 4 review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

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It was just another day, humanity was simply minding its own business, and then bam. Aliens attack. Again. Actually again, again, again, again as this time around, you've got enemies from across the Defense Forces seemingly under a banner of a new big bad that has split the world into literal pieces. With no choice to pick up a weapon and fight in humanity's defense once again, welcome back to the field Commander in Earth Defense Force: World Brothers.

The latest EDF entry is an interesting one as it takes the campy-ness, doubles it, and makes it work in a family friendly style that the rest of the series cannot say the same for. I was a bit worried about this direction as I wondered if it may not be too campy for long-time fans but it doesn't take long to settle into the action and the dialog across the sixty missions that make up the first stretch of the game. Once that's done, higher difficulties are unlocked and the rest of the trophies can be hunted down.

Returning to a class based structure as is common with the core EDF titles, this time around you'll be creating a squad of four to take out and fight back against the invaders with in a 3D action style. Going this route allows for one customizations such as four Lancers with different weapons or four separate class types to really be able to adapt to the field. Hell, with all of the campiness you can even take Aya from Onechanbara to fight against the invading hordes!

The overall structure is simple enough but without some of the provided DLC I could potentially see some frustrations at times especially when getting into late game. The reason is, as standard, your squad units will receive armor points for successfully completing a mission. That's about all that is given to you as if you want new or more powerful weapons, you're going to have to rescue one to three other EDF members in the field and hope that they give you what you want. Generally speaking? This was not that case.

This is where I worry that may turn off some people due to the fact that it's random and there's no control over any of it. There are no skill trees or upgrade paths, it's just random to acquire variations of a class, new weapons, and new accessories. If you already have one it's a bonus as it gets upgraded but over the course of the main campaign? I was rocking only a handful of level 2 squad members, weapons and accessories.

Otherwise, if you're here to hunt down giant monsters and space aliens you've come to the right place as there's no shortage of that! From start to finish the objective is simple, shoot to kill everything in sight. From time to time there may be another objective such as defending a landmark but overall, it's done in the same manner as eliminating everything coming at it. Between the classes and the weapons (as they unlock) there are plenty of different ways to go about this and there are trophies for all of them!

Finally, while there is some diversity in gameplay from an Infantry Unit to a heavy infantry unit like a Lancer, to a Wing Diver that takes to the skies into a Ninja (yes Ninja) that strikes lightning quick, when it boils down to it it's not really what these individual units can do separately, but what they can do together which makes this combination of a four person squad interesting. Fly around to quickly get out of harm's way and then drop back in with a heavy weapon (as long as you're in range) and let loose. Enemies getting too close and your weapons take time to fire up or would cause your units themselves harm? Keep someone close that either specializes in melee weapons like swords or punching gloves or go with the classics, a shotgun. If it comes to getting up close and personal you can't go wrong with either or these two!

Summary

That's really all there is to it. Earth Defense Force: World Brothers is simplified fun and even at its toughest running on normal, players shouldn't have an issue dispatching the newest set of does to attack Planet Earth. The only real issue is the pacing of the upgrades but once you're passed that there's nothing to worry about other than how many missions can be crammed into an evening.

Score: 7.5 / 10

 

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Gleamlight - XB1 Review

Gleamlight by developer DICO and publisher D3 Publisher—Microsoft Xbox One review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Gleamlight is something that caught my eye a while back while it was still under Steam’s Early Access label. Here was a 2D “soulslike” inspired adventure built in a world of gorgeous stained glass which has you platforming your way with nothing short of your own intuition. Gleamlight has no tutorials, no HUDs and ZERO help. It honestly had everything that it needed to raise the bar on the style, however like the stained glass it looks like, there’s a fragile balance to its features and unfortunately the glass couldn’t quite hold up to the heat of the oven.

Going in I knew several things. The first, is that there were zero instructions and I would need to figure everything out which was fine as most of the buttons do what you think they should do. Attack. Jump. Move left or right. As you progress you’ll learn new abilities that simply require poking at every button on the controller to see what was unlocked and then figure out how to best use it. Dodging, double jumping, rocket boosting higher or increased attack power with a second sword that is picked up. The second thing that I knew was that I had to play past the credits as there was “more” to the adventure. "Several" times actually.

The adventure, or adventures if you consider that each portion has a beginning and an end, are not very long. Less than an hour per segment, finding myself at the first set of credits I had to wonder if that could really be it? Even if not very long, Gleamlight, while gorgeous to look at, feels rather bland which is very unfortunate because it has different enemy types trying to kill you. It has some interesting elements such as the zero help, no head’s up displays for health or minimaps. Where it falls short is that the platforming puzzles are just too easy and you literally just have to walk from one area to the other and hit anything in sight because what could have been one Gleamlight’s greatest features, was perhaps its biggest detriment.

Instead of having “health”, you instead have light behind the glass that makes up your character. If you get hit, you lose light and the enemy absorbs it. If you hit the enemy, you take that light back. It basically ends once there’s no more light inside and either you or them will crumble to the ground. Having a life leeching ability like that from the very beginning just made everything way too easy as it even turns most boss fights into a twenty second slugfest as there’s no fear of dying once you take out their protective crystals. They hit you, you lose light, you become invincible, you swing three times faster than they do and grab back what was lost and more and then the boss crumbles to the ground. Totalling only a few bosses between the start and the first credits? There had to be more.

And there is. Once you’ve gone down the path of the first adventure, you’ll be making your way back up for the second with new abilities and harder enemies to fight against. This second path had the difficulty that I had expected to encounter from the beginning. The platforming was more challenging, the enemies were more dangerous because of where they were placed, and some bosses couldn’t exactly be tanked because of how they moved around the map. That said, because of the life leeching on both sides, some fights just went on and on as the boss wouldn’t stay put and by the time you made it over to them, they were already back on the other side of the map and had spawned even more minions.

It lacked a sense of balance and I found myself at the second set of credits wondering… what awaits the third, and, already feeling a bit annoyed at the slugfests, how’s it going to play out? That, I'll let you find out on your own!

There are a lot of good ideas, but just with the life leeching ability alone, a lot of the danger is removed because “who cares if I get hit, I’ll just take it back”. There are more enemies than you often know what to do with or want to even bother with by this point. Most of them are just in the way from points A to B. The puzzle solving is too basic as it requires only hitting one or three switches and then moving through the doorway into the next zone to do the same all over again.

Now everything all said and done, I've sunk a lot of time into this to try for the real endings and full gamerscore. As it stands now I'm just missing dying 100 times and some secret boss that I cannot seem to find. There's a hidden charm for sure, but it's never enough to get past the issues listed above.

Summary

So overall, Gleamlight is a good testing ground for a different kind of adventure but unfortunately some of its more unique ideas are what does it in. Gorgeous to look at, there’s simply no challenge to the combat and the platforming never really becomes complex enough to “make you sweat”. Adding in that the puzzle solving is extremely basic and I’m glad that it only took a few hours to go through because it all started to feel rather repetitive.

That said, I’m hoping to see more in the vein of Gleamlight down the line with perhaps more refined features and a harder difficulty such as two hits and you’re out which would increase the stress of your decisions and the difficulty dramatically.

Score: 6 / 10

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Earth Defence Force: Iron Rain - PC Review

Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain is an interesting and corny run and gun game brought to us by Yukes. Full of corny dialogue, giant bugs, and fancy powered mech suits, Iron Rain certainly throws that nostalgia of low budget sci-fi movies at you.

You jump into Iron Rain as a nameless soldier in a fight with an invading horde of aliens in the form of giant bugs. Or at least, I think so. The Earth has all but been taken over by the alien invaders, and it is the job of you and your combat team to fight back against the invaders, as well as the rebel group that’s stealing all your resources.

With the aid of your fancy powered suit, you also have weapons with energy clips you can blast your way through some seriously oversized bugs. Iron Rain is pretty standard fair for the run and gun style of game: you’ve got two weapons that you can switch between, both changeable at the mission select screen. You also have a couple of different rigs to choose from which have different abilities. For instance the ones you start with give you a dash to use as a dodge or a flight rig.

Items you can bring into missions with you, such as healing items and items to revive your teammates can also be acquired through spending the cash you earn through killing the aliens. Sounds fun, right? Well, it would be if there weren’t a few glaring issues. First up, any of you played the Mass Effect games? Remember how awful the Mako controlled? Well, vehicles in this are worse. So very, very worse. The vehicles, especially the tank, controlled like a shopping cart with the two back wheels locked, with the weight of a freaking throw pillow.

Enemies are both really weak and ridiculously tough. Not because they’re particularly great at beating you up, but rather the combination of the enemies having some seriously precise homing shots and the ability to sandbag you make for some rather unfortunate situations. There were a couple of times where I got blindsided by an enemy and then swarmed, only to have the rest continuously knock me around. While you do have a sort of overdrive that blasts enemies back for a bit, they can still rather promptly overrun you. There is a wide array of weapons to choose from, but after doing a few missions, I found a set I liked and didn’t really have any reason to change off of them unless it was to purchase an upgraded version. The stages are also rather same-y for the most part. By the end of the third stage, you’ll probably have a good idea how the rest of the game will play out.

While Iron Rain does offer some rather entertaining gameplay and a decent array of weapons and customizable appearance, the missions mostly just feel repetitive or a struggle due to unfair enemy sandbagging. Ally AI characters are insufferably stupid, more often shooting out into nowhere rather than at enemies, and tend to walk in front of your fire. And yes, you can KO your allies through friendly fire. Stages also tend to produce a lot of lag, although not really consistent between stages. For instance, the last stage I played before writing this had a huge lag spike every 4 seconds almost exactly, whereas the stage before was intermittent throughout.

Overall, Earth Defense Force: Iron Raid is rather lacking as a whole. While the gameplay is ok and I don’t particularly mind repetitive stages (heck, I finished Robotron 64), some of the unfair situations you can get into really put a damper on it. While not unplayable, the combination of choppy frame rates and frustrating mechanics leave you feeling like Iron Rain can often feel like more of a demo than a full game. While I would recommend picking it up if it’s on sale or packaged with something else, I would be a little more reserved about getting it flat out, unless you’re a fan of the series or are looking for a multiplayer game to play with your friends.

Game Information

Platform:
PC
Developer(s):
Yuke's
Publisher(s):
D3 Publisher
Genre(s):
Action, Third Person Shooter, B-Lister Horror
Mode(s):
Single Player, Multiplayer
Other Platform(s):
Sony PlayStation 4

Source:
Provided by Publisher

Article by Richard

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