Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair Review

Why must there be so many bugs?!
earth defense force

The Wing Diver is by far the best class in the game, and it’s not necessarily due to power. It actually has the lowest armor in the game, and all classes have access to potent killing machines. The Wing Diver just happens to take full control of the environment and is the most fun to use. You fly around, reaching the tops of buildings, raining hell on ants, spiders, and whatever else the game decides to throw at you, all while looking (and feeling) like a complete badass.

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It makes the imbalance between Earth Defense Force 4.1’s different classes extremely clear. If you do decide to play multiplayer, then it becomes much more reasonable to want to use the different characters. Strategizing your assault to perfectly time your reload times or to just set up cool looking explosions can be a bit fun, but you still can’t help but feel the disparity between the clearly fun Wing Diver and everything else.

Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair_20151202184957

The actual game itself isn’t all that remarkable unfortunately, even if you do play as the only class with the ability to fly at all times. At first, the act of mowing down hundreds of huge insects (at first it’s just ants, but eventually you’ll come across different types of spiders and more dangerous enemies) is incredibly fun. Watching as their appendages are blown off, or bringing a bridge down onto a huge swarm is satisfying. But, as time goes on, you’ll realize that’s all you do.

A mission starts, you go kill all of the enemies, some more appear elsewhere in stage, you kill those and that’s it, mission complete. The never ending barrage of cookie-cutter missions and the rotating backdrop of locations (there really aren’t that many different areas) wears down on the experience.

There is a story, one that has to deal with the evolution of all of the enemies since their last appearance seven years ago. The voice acting will have you quickly tuning that out, though. There’s also the fact that the game thinks that the best time to deal with narrative is when you’re surrounded by hundreds of screeching insects. When the other enemy types (which we won’t spoil for you) get introduced, it’s just weird because the story just wasn’t worth paying attention to.

Earth Defense Force 4.1 does throw new weapons and armor (which doesn’t change your appearance) at you for your efforts, but sticking around long enough to put any to good use is a daunting endeavor. There are just too many missed opportunities to justify sticking around for very long.

Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair has some good features. One amazing class, destructible environments, and tons of onscreen enemies sounds like the makings of something great. But the highly repetitive missions, dated graphics, forgettable story, and lack of anything worth sticking around for make the game a largely forgettable experience.

SCORE: 2/5


PROS

  • Bugs look great.
  • Wing Diver is amazing.

 

CONS

  • Dated graphics.
  • Repetitive missions.
  • No other class is impressive.
  • Story is forgettable.

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Author
Ishmael Romero
Just a wandering character from Brooklyn, NY. A fan of horrible Spider-Man games, anime, and corny jokes.