Earth Defense Force 6 review – frozen in time (2024)

The only video game that’s proud of how many bugs it has returns with a very familiar premise but some excellent co-op action.

Earth Defense Force celebrated its 20^th anniversary last year, which means that for two decades now Japanese developer Sandlot has been churning out sequels and spin-offs, despite no sign of mainstream success or significant innovation. In fact, for much of that time they’ve merely been trying to recreate the magic of the early games, which overcame their low budget origins to become some of the most enjoyable third person shooters on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360.

Sandlot was never able to take advantage of improving technology though, or the franchise’s relative fame, and while the last few games have been an improvement it does feel very much like the moment has passed for the series. Mild success is better than no success though and so we arrive at sequel number six.

The main selling point of Earth Defense Force 6 is that it has more missions and weapons than any previous title, which isn’t very reassuring when one of the series’ key problems has been quality not quantity. But, thanks to a typically dumb plot, a slightly different setting than usual, and more enemy variety it does just about justify its existence. Which is very much the Earth Defense Force tradition.

The plot in question involves time travel, with the game starting out with the Earth all but destroyed – by aliens whose preferred weapons of choice are giant insects and Godzilla-sized robots – and humanity on the verge of extinction. The only answer is to do a Terminator and try and travel back to the events of Earth Defense Force 5, to ensure the invasion never succeeds. Except the time travel technology belongs to the aliens and both sides quickly end up in a timey-wimey stalemate.

There was probably a way you could’ve taken that story seriously and created some genuine human drama out of it its B-movie premise, but that’s not the sort of game this is. What you actually get (in a series that originally didn’t have any story at all) is dialogue so bad it wraps around to being highly amusing, especially if you fondly recall the glory days of the original Resident Evil games.

With every element of the game, including the storytelling, gameplay, and graphics, you can’t help but imagine what it’d be like if Sandlot had a bigger budget, and more experience making AAA games, but despite it all there’s a cheesy charm to everything, that means a part of you hopes it never changes – which is just as well, because it shows no sign of doing so.

Earth Defense Force 6 doesn’t really do anything new except have more of everything: more weapons, more enemy types, and more missions (and more microtransactions).

Although there are plenty of ordinary machineguns and shotguns, there’s also a huge range of sci-fi weapons to unlock, from laser guns to colossal hammers. There’s 140 in total and though many are just minor variations it’s still an impressive armoury, especially when you add in a wide range of armoured vehicles, including aircraft, that you can pilot.

Earth Defense Force 6 review summary

In Short: It’s the same old EDF in terms of graphics, gameplay, and the swarm of (mostly intentional) bugs but online co-op and a mountain of content means it still holds a special charm.

Pros: Amusingly over-the-top action on a scale that few other games ever attempt. Great online co-op and tons of different weapons, vehicles, and enemies. Awful dialogue is very funny.

Cons: Very few new ideas, with no new character classes. Low-tech graphics, too many glitches, and broken split-screen mode. Too expensive, with too many microtransactions.

Score: 7/10