Earth Defense Force 2017 is a third-person shooter developed D3Publisher and released on the Xbox 360 as a budget title. The events of the game see you assume the role of a soldier known only as Storm-1, a member of Storm Team in the title Earth Defense Force, in order to fend off an invading extraterrestrial army. Said army happens to consist of giant ants, giant spiders, UFOs, gunships, several flavours of titanic robot, some Godzilla-sized monsters and a mothership powerful enough to kill you and everyone you've ever met.Good luck out there.The Spiritual Successor to this title — Earth Defense Force Insect Armageddon — is now available on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Steam.Not to be confused with the Jaleco Shoot 'Em UpEarth Defense Force.This game provides examples of:
Art Evolution: The enemy Robots and Spaceships look much more like they were from early Japanese B-Movies of the 50's and 60's, also the "Saurus" enemy went from looking like Godzilla to looking like American GODZILLA when it changed its name to "Vallak".
Awesome, but Impractical: Many of the very powerful guns have severe drawbacks, such as obtrusively long reload times, or limited ammo. In particular, the ZE sentry gun series all take 20 seconds to reload, and you can only reload AFTER the deployed sentries have used up all their ammo and disappeared. The sniper rifles suffer from this too; they're powerful, but each shot can only kill one enemy at a time, and the only times you'll need concentrated firepower like that are against the boss monsters, and Walking Arms.
Badass: Storm 1, the player character and a Heroic Mime. Just think about it. He almost single handedly repels and defeats an invasion of Earth by thousands upon thousands of alien beings and weapons more powerful and advanced than anything Earth had ever seen. These include hordes of giant, mutant ants and spiders, gigantic, plasma gun wielding robots, fleets of small airships, also with plasma guns, fleets of large carrier ships that deploy more giant ants and spiders, gigantic, fire breathing, part machine dinosaurs, two of said dinosaurs simultaneously, now with fire breath replaced with dual plasma cannons, a gigantic four-legged walking robot with an absurd amount of lasers, including one that it uses to decimate cities, and the alien mothership, which has even more lasers than the four-legged walker, deploys air ships, and has an even more powerful city decimating laser. He does all of this while being able to carry two weapons to the battlefield at a time, some armor, and the ability to roll. All of the other EDF soldiers are mostly useless and are nothing compared to him. There is a reason that Storm 1 alone is sent to destroy entire mutant bug nests and back up whole teams later in the game.
Blessed with Suck: One type of hand grenade, the MG13, is absurdly more powerful than previous models, and has a fantastic blast radius. The downside? It's so heavy, you can't throw it more than a few feet forward, and you're not immune to the explosions from your own weapons. There is one level where you can safely use it, though. This would be the underground area consisting of a large vertical passage with spiders milling about at the bottom. You start at the top, and from there you can safely throw down MG13's to blow the spiders to smithereens. This could count as a Disc One Nuke, because this tactic even works on Hard, and can get you some very powerful guns a little early.
Can also be successfully used with a second player with explosives and sharp timing. You are immune to damage while knocked into the air by explosives. Throw the MG13, and, while it's in the air, get blasted aloft by an attack before it detonates and everything nearby dies. Oh, and you go flying, of course.
"Blind Idiot" Translation: Certain parts of the game could be considered this, especially the dialogue in mission 14:
"Come in HQ. This is Scout Four. The Mothership has moved to this location. We've also discovered a four-legged fighter robot."
"What do you mean 'four-legged weapon'?"
"This is HQ. All troops, begin your assault. Destroy the four-legged walking weapon."
Boring, but Practical: The majority of the assault rifles, and to some extent the basic rocket launchers and grenade launchers. Although it's important to balance the two weapons you choose for each level, almost the entire game seems to want you to stick with an assault rifle and rocket or grenade launcher.
Camp: It's a budget game where you play as a little guy who runs around blasting everything from giant bugs, giant robots, flying saucers, and Kaiju-style monsters. It might as well be called B-Movie: The Game.
Disc One Final Boss: In Global Defense Force a little before midway through the game you fight the final boss of Monster Attack again and the game keeps treating this like it is the end with the mission briefings even telling you that it is the end. After two missions of "mop-up duty", the actual final boss a sky spanningflying city warps in and unleashes hell on you for the rest of the game.
Fake Difficulty: The game has no auto-save. It's easy to forget this, which has led to a Cluster F-Bomb from many a gamer who just cleared a few tough stages on inferno as they instinctively hit the power button.
Floating Continent : The final boss in Global Defense Force literally takes up most of the sky.
Flying Saucer: The Enemy drop ships sort of resemble saucers with some sort of tail assembly.
Half used. The Redshirt Army can't hurt you with their weapons (Which is good, because then they'd be nearly as dangerous as the ravagers.) but they can send you flying through the air for a few precious seconds with an ill-timed rocket. You can easily kill them though, so watch it with that shotgun.
Averted in Local Co-op play. It is entirely possible to blow each other away by accident or on purpose.
Heart Container: Armor pickups. You start with 100 maximum health, and each Armor item you get will increase it by 1, but only after you finish the level. It's necessary to beef up your health for each difficulty level, due to how much more damage enemies can deal to you.
Humongous Mecha: Most of the series robotic enemies, especially in the third game with the "Walking Arms".
Hyperspace Arsenal: Averted. For all the 150+ weapons you can unlock, you can only carry TWO at a time.
Infinity+1 Sword: There are quite a few of these, mostly unlocked on Hardest or Inferno.
Infinite Supplies: Despite the fact that you have to reload most of your weapons, you never run out of magazines. There are a few weapons which have limited ammo.
Insectoid Aliens: Its not revealed whether the aliens are this or if they just have a thing for giant bugs as shock troops.
Kill It with Fire: Flamethrowers are among the miscellaneous weapons you can unlock. Although the first model (which the game specifically notes as "a gas burner for welding") is horribly weak, there are later models which are viable for combat, especially against giant ants. They don't have much range and don't actually set enemies on fire, but the flames can deal very effective damage, and they can stun enemies which prevents them from attacking you.
The FORK missile launchers. These fire a spread of tiny high-speed homing missiles. However, the effect is somewhat lost since they usually home in on only one enemy at a time, and they don't fly around chaotically.
Nearly every type of enemy has a projectile attack except the red ants, but the greatest example would be the Walking Arms, massive bipedal robots that can use various types of arm guns. Some have plasma bombs or energy mortars which they can use to bombard you from a distance, but others come equipped with machine guns that can fire enough bullets to make the game lag. Of course, one specific endgame weapon gives you this trope as well; the AF20-RAR, which fires 60 rounds per second, and has a magazine holding 999 rounds.
Some of the Rocket Launchers in the game follow this. The Vocano series launchers fire off their entire ammo stock in trigger pull versus the standard one at a time approach of the other rocket launchers.
New Game Plus: Sort of. You already have access to all of the game's difficulty levels, but you have to unlock each stage by beating the one before it, regardless of what difficulty you play on. You keep all the weapons and armor you get, and can play each level as many times as you want.
Nintendo Hard: Any difficulty other then Easy or Normal, especially if you have not gained armor or weapons by doing them in order.
Not the Fall That Kills You: No matter how far you fall, you won't even sprain an ankle. You also have a surprisingly slow terminal velocity.
No Export for You: This game is actually the third in the Chikyuu Boueigun series; the first two installments were on the PS2 and never came out in America, although they were released in Europe as Monster Attack and Global Defense Force.
Randomly Drops: This is how the Weapon items work. For each one you get, after finishing the level the game randomly picks a weapon out of all the weapons you can unlock on that stage of that difficulty level. If it's a weapon you don't have yet, it gets added to your selection. If you already have it, it doesn't count for anything.
Redshirt Army: Moderately useful in some situations, seeing as they can absorb the brunt of the enemy's attack. Their survival rate is still absurdly low though. And at higher difficulties... Well...
Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: Played straight as an arrow. As you play through the game, you'll get better weapons in later levels. When you play on a higher difficulty level, you get even more powerful weapons. Each of the weapons has a minimum stage and difficulty level to be unlocked. For instance, if a weapon will only be unlocked at level 15 on Normal or later, you can unlock it on any level after and including 15 on Normal, and any level on Hard or higher. You can still get the Normal level weapons on Easy, though.
There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Genocide gun. Inflicts 1.000.000 points of damage, more than enough to one-shot bosses, and enormous explosion radius, reducing about half the buildings on a city map to rubble.
Video Game Cruelty Potential: Actively encouraged by the ridiculously stupid NPC allies. In any mode outside of Inferno, it's better that you kill your allies rather than letting them fire rockets at your back. It's especially fun since they never blame you for killing them. Obviously, it's the alien's fault when you drop a C20 in the middle of your allies and blow them into the stratosphere.
Video Game Cruelty Punishment: ...then you realize that your allies don't deal friendly fire damage (they'll knock you into the air if they hit you with a rocket, but that's it), and every ant, spider, Walking Arms, and gunship on the map is now aiming for you, and only you.
Unnecessary Combat Roll: Not only are you able to continue reloading your gun while rolling, but doing so repeatedly is almost twice as fast as running.
The walking fortress (a humongous four-legged battle machine) has an allegedly 300-foot plasma cannon which can easily destroy an entire city with just a few shots. ("A plasma cannon that size can't possibly exist!!") The alien mothership also has an equally devastating laser gun.
The player can earn one after beating all the levels on Inferno.
Zerg Rush: The bug enemies standard tactic, the red ants in particular seem to specialize in this.
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