Earth Defence Force 2017 Review

Take Starship Troopers meets War of the Worlds and you get Earth Defense Force 2017. Too bad it isn’t nearly as fun as watching Michael Ironside get his legs ripped off by a tanker bug. They sucked this game's brains out.

As extraterrestrials arrive on planet Earth, they begin an invasion Independence Day style. Basically they just let loose hoards of giant bugs and robots that are not friendly, to say the least. You play as a soldier in some unit that was trained to deal with such a threat. It really doesn’t matter since there is absolutely no story. If you have seen or read any sci-fi noir tale then you know what is going down in EDF2017. The super cheesy dialog and voice work are icing on the cake.

The story is non-existent, how about the gameplay? Zzzzzz…oh yeah, you shoot things, lots of them. The gameplay blows. It goes a little something like this – aim, fire, repeat. Since there are so many enemies and they are so large, there really is no skill involved in taking them out.


Spread this formula throughout 53 painstakingly repetitive levels. I challenge anyone to get through the first dozen and still be interested. Both the character design and environments are very limited. It is peculiar when a battle is going down in Japan and the next level takes place in Europe, yet the city is EXACTLY THE SAME. Nice try.

Lets go over some other oddities shall we? How about the ability to take down enemy air ships with an ordinary assault rifle. That’s a laugh. And then when the fighter falls out of the sky on to our hero’s head, he takes no damage. Most of the environment is destructable but almost too easily and without consequence. Only 6 achievements are available and no online play equals lameness.


This game is bad, I don’t think that I have even given one redeeming quality throughout this whole review. Yet somehow I was stuck playing EDF2017 for two hours my first sit-down, which is surprising. I think with a bigger budget and a little more inspiration, EDF2017 could actually be entertaining.