[contains spoilers]
If you're curious what a western spin on Earth Defense Force looks like, then I would recommend to keep dreaming because Insect Armageddon is a grim portrayal. I may have been lukewarm on EDF 4.1 seven years ago, but that's largely because I didn't expect it to be a simple retread of EDF 2017 in a bigger, more bloated package. Insect Armageddon takes that formula and applies its own tweaks, producing a game that's similar in style but quite different in taste. Frankly: it's a colorless experience, one that swaps out cheesy authenticity for American pulp and jargon, rightfully earning its place as the worst game in the franchise.
Insect Armageddon can be lambasted for a plethora of reasons, including but not limited to: drab artstyle, short campaign, no large swarms, cliffhanger ending, boring music, and only a single setting for the entire game (city). While these shortcomings already condemn the game to mediocrity, what sticks out as the most egregious to me are the lesser details—things easily missed unless you're accustomed to the eccentricities of the series. I don't deny that a newbie could play Insect Armageddon and have some harmless fun with it, but they won't know what they're missing until they play a Sandlot title. And then, like the transition from Dominos to a New York pizzeria, the disparity will be staggering.
My first issue is one that immediately kills any kind of love I could have for the game: the chatter. Camp is ingrained in EDF's DNA just as much as its bald-faced commitment to its delivery. Insect Armageddon however, prefers its camp to be low brow and satirical, poking fun at itself rather than taking the alien invasion seriously. Gone are the worldwide updates, shocking monster reveals, and frantic cries of fleeing civilians—instead you'll mostly have your operator stoically telling you what to do all while your teammates crack terrible jokes. Prepare for comments like: "these bugs smell worse than my mother-in-law", "remember the Alamo!", and "forgot my deodorant this morning! Gonna have to burn this armor when this is done!" All of these are a far cry from the beautiful, inane simplicity of "go home, bugs!", "I agree, guns are the best!" and "do you like death? Then die!"
It's hard to put into words why this precise brand of camp—the self-serious corniness—is integral to the series, but I feel it's as essential as the act of shooting bugs itself. The difference between Sandlot's EDF and Vicious Cycle Software's is akin that between bad 70's sci-fi movies and films made by The Asylum. The former may or may not be aware of the tremendously low quality of its material, but it is committed to presenting it as an earnest and pressing tale. Meanwhile, the latter is made to entertain folks that grew up on such schlock, winking and nodding at the viewer over its own ludicrous script. In a way, you can derive meaning from the former—while the latter is intentionally devoid of it.
Similarly, Insect Armageddon thinks of itself as a big bug attack game, rather than a big bug attack story, prioritizing objectives over events. There's very little reason or urgency beyond what your handler tells you is "mission critical", and even those orders are one step removed from her, coming from a faceless bureaucracy (which the game tries to paint as morally dubious in a poor attempt to raise stakes). Gone is the focus on the human element in this equation: the boots on the ground trying to maintain their sanity and morale in an outlandish horror scenario. This ultimately keeps the player from investing in Insect Armageddon's storyline, as they're not fighting to save the world or their country or even a single town—they're simply doing their assigned mission. In other EDF games you're part of a (hyper) nationalistic, collectivist unit that knows that if it falls, so too will the world; in Insect Armageddon you're an expendable military grunt that will speak only when spoken to, and that doesn't bother you one bit.
Things don't fare better in the gameplay department either, as Insect Armageddon doesn't understand the power trip inherent in EDF's arsenal. In the other games, weapons sound weighty and pack a mighty punch, rocketing bugs off into the stratosphere after a congratulatory explosion of alien blood. Here however, it feels as though you're firing low-velocity needles into your foes, their corpses rarely bouncing into another block (before instantly disappearing). Rocketing hordes will never see their bodies careening off into the far reaches of space, and larger enemies brush off your shots entirely, sometimes spewing a meager pink mist to show you're hitting their weak spot. Compare that to the hectors in EDF 2017, where laying into one with an assault rifle sees them jostling around like a drunk frat boy atop a mechanical bull. From the sound to the animation to the reaction of the aliens, none of the guns in Insect Armageddon are made to be satisfying to use—and that's a death knell for a shooter the way terrible physics are for a platformer.
On the bright side, one of the things Insect Armageddon can laud over its older sibling is its class system. From here on out, EDF includes four distinct classes for players to swap between, and the series is all the better for it. But like with 4.1, progress between classes is not shared, so switching from Wing Diver to Fencer will have you starting from rock bottom progression-wise. Thanks to Insect Armageddon's experience system, it's not that hard to go from one class to another early on, as your health and weapons are meted out by your experience level rather than random drops out in the field. But this too comes with its own downside, as you no longer get to collect piles of goodies between every fight—instead, only health pick-ups dot the battlefield, which are more useless than usual as you'll rarely be returning from whence you came. Occasionally bigger enemies will drop a weapon pick-up, but these too are gated by level requirement—meaning if you pick up a level 4 weapon when you're level 2, then you better get to grinding soldier.
The only other thing Insect Armageddon got right are its new enemies. Although ticks prompt an annoying QTE mash-fest once they latch on, they're a good low HP swarm enemy to stay on the lookout for, and their big bad momma looks properly grotesque. Wasps are nasty aerial units that are good at distracting the player, mantises are mobile titans that are the right level of dangerous, and the daddy long legs is an awesome variation on the walking fortress concept that sadly doesn't see enough use. That's about all there are for new additions (though hectors are fairly different from their 2017 counterparts), and for as short as the game is, I think it did an admirable job of spicing things up... at least for the enemies.
The mission structure on the other hand is exhaustingly repetitive, constantly ferrying you from one ant hill or crashed plane to the next. Occasionally your battles will be broken up with a stationary turret or vehicle section, but it's nevertheless surprising just how unexciting and routine the game feels even with a five hour runtime. Part of the problem is that Insect Armageddon has a misguided preference for long missions, throwing two dozen waves of enemies at the player over the course of a single level, rather than the 3-4 waves you'd see normally. Each bug barrage gradually wears on the player as each wave pops up without reprieve—and given that this all takes place in the same washed-out city, it's not as though you'll feel progress moving from one mission to the next. Plus, the longer mission structure runs antithetical to EDF's giant armament selection, limiting the chances you have to experiment around with different weapon loadouts. By the end of the game, the only missions I remember with some clarity are the giant hector, ditch, and bug queen missions—the first because it's the quickest level to grind experience for, the second because it seemed to go on forever, and the last because I was completely unaware that it was the end of the game.
That's right—there's no mothership finale! It does indeed show up to shoot at you, but all you can do is flee from it, your tail tucked between your legs.
In retrospect, I think I was too harsh on EDF 4.1. I expected more out of the franchise... despite having not known that every game is more or less a remix of the very first Chikyū Bōeigun (including story beats, enemy design, and stage themes). After Insect Armageddon was over, I actually returned to EDF 4.1 for a couple missions just to make sure I wasn't imagining things. And nope—that game is still rock solid, even if it is too big for its own good. Insect Armageddon on the other hand I will probably never revisit. It's not abysmal nor a blatant waste of time, but the problem is that in a series so steeped in unflagging repetition, there's almost no reason to play an inferior iteration. Every other EDF game delivers on the promise of a world uniting to fight back against an alien menace except for this one, and because of that, I don't feel guilty leaving it behind.
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