Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders from Planet Space (PS Vita) Review

Defending the Earth can be a hard job as alien invaders tend not to fight fair. Levelling cities from their spaceships, infesting the planet with giant bugs, and even bringing down giant Kaiju (it's definitely not Godzilla, please don't sue Toho!). To fight back, the special forces of the Earth Defense Force have three different classes of soldier, each with numerous weapons to unlock. These forces travel across some real-life locations around the globe, slaughtering any aliens they find along the way.

There's plenty to do here, with a ton of stages that each can be replayed in six different difficulty levels and as each of the different classes: Ranger, Pale Wing, and - a new addition to this version - the Air Raider. These stages can all be taken on in single-player or co-operative with up to four players, either online or ad-hoc.

The stages all amount to the same thing: kill every alien invader within a zone. These invaders may be giant ants or spiders, alien ships or giant monsters. It doesn't matter - just kill them all. The three classes offer a different experience; the infantry is a standard ground trooper, equipped with modern day weapons, like machine guns, explosives, sniper rifles and so on. The Pale Wing is a bit more sci-fi, equipped with a jetpack to rocket over the streets, and high tech weapons, like laser guns and plasma cannons. Finally, the new addition to this remake is the Air Raider. This new class is more of a support class, able to call in artillery strikes, to set up unmanned turrets, and to summon vehicles or support equipment. There are also vehicles to utilise on each mission, including tanks and helicopters; however, these vehicles are often counter-productive as the controls for them are terrible and rarely are they any more useful than the standard weapons.

The enemies aren't particularly smart, nor are they especially aggressive. Often they will wander aimlessly around their stage or get stuck on scenery, making for little challenge. When killed, each enemy can drop items - health refills, armour upgrades, and new weapons to equip. The armour upgrades and the new weapon unlocks are only for the current class, which helps incentivise replaying as the others. This motivation to keep on going is something sorely needed, since everything is filled with repetitive gameplay and designs.

The repetitive nature of the gameplay is not the only negative, though, as the presentation is, frankly, terrible. The graphics may have had somewhat of an upscale, but this still looks very dated. The models are blocky and the textures are dull. The destructible scenery all collapses in the same way and the voice work is even worse than the graphics - House of the Dead 2 levels of bad. Weirdly, though, this… works. After all, this is a game based around classic B-movies, in other words, the terrible special effects and acting are par for the course!

In addition to the co-operative mode, there's also a multiplayer mode called Rumble that is effectively a Vs. battle in a large random map. Honestly, this offers little enjoyment, with the flaws abundant throughout being actually worse against human foes and the nature of the game - a single kill ends the match - is poorly designed.