Earth Defense Force

Vicious Cycle has announced Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon which sees the fictitious city of New Detroit overrun with nasty bugs.

This co-op arcade shooter gives us thousands of bugs to slaughter with over 150 weapons. The city is completely destroyable. It's out spring 2011.

The campaign has up to 3 players partner together online and gun down the insects and other foes across a cityscape that's totally open to being left a smouldering crater. Each EDF troop has over 150 weapons and 4 upgradeable sets of armour.

There is also a 6-player Survival mode which throws a human squad against a flood of very large insects in a massive onslaught. Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon releases on Xbox 360 and PS 3 spring 2011.

Howdy, I am Jim Richardson and I am the Lead Designer on EDF:IA. I ought to have my rank 8 asbestos Battle Armor on, coming in here—but here I am. I have read this board regularly throughout the dev cycle and wished I could answer some concerns/explain some things, but talking about an ongoing project is usually a big no-no. I can start out saying that I am a big fan of the EDF series. I freely admit that I played way more 2017 than the previous 2 titles. It’s obvious that everyone takes something different away from a game as its defining essence. There’s no denying that and there’s no denying the fact that you can’t please everybody. It’s a sad fact of this business that game series’ with poor sales usually don’t continue. As fun as all of us know that 2017 was, it didn’t sell a lot of copies here. At all. Most games that sell like it did wouldn't come to the west again. I was pleasantly surprised and humbled that we were asked to make a game in the EDF universe. Main stipulations were: A. Make it have more appeal to western gamers, and B. Online Co-op. Believe me when I say that the design changes were not flippant decisions- careful thought went into all of them (or they were forced by technical constraints). An awful lot of the changes were made in the service of online playability and co-op team play. A bunch of things that work well playing in the same room with someone or playing single player just don’t work online. Maybe, if playing with headsets and people you know and trust, but that’s not always the case. The need for network speed also forced a number of changes.

Here are a couple examples of changes made and why:

Bouncing Bug Corpses—there’s a definite ceiling on the number of active entities/physics objects that can be ingame (networked) without causing significant performance hits. It ultimately came down to the fact that the dead bugs had to get cleaned up so we could max the number of live bugs at a given time. Hit em hard enough and they still fly around a bit.

Revival—I fought with this idea for a long time and went back and forth on it. I thought player death was handled perfectly in 2017. Perfectly, considering if I was playing I was either by myself or in the same room as my co-player. Online, there’s a lot less a chance someone who dies is gonna sit there and spectate . In all likelihood they leave the game and move to another one. That could cause frustration both for the quitter and quittees. Believe me….full team wipes happen plenty.

Shared Health Pickups— I think they reinforce the “team” idea- eliminating the situation where you are hurt bad but Random online dude is at 95% health and ganks the only pickup and you die. You also have a health “overcharge” (that’s the 2nd health bar overlay)—if your health is full, picking up health pickups heals your squadmates and gives you a bonus health bump. Win win, in my book.

Waypoints were there in 2017. Maybe a little different, but they were there. Our missions are longer (in general) and in the interest of keeping players on relatively the same page in online multiplayer, we made stuff a little more clear. You have to assume that people do not have headsets and are not in the same room, talking to one another.

More later….

FYI: Most (if not all) of the demo footage HAS been shot with jacked up armors and weapons fighting in “Normal Mode” (meaning “Easy”). In this situation, some of the multi-seeking missiles tend to be overkill and take out five enemies with a single trigger pull—making swarms look smaller than they are and a lot less dangerous. Believe it.

Once you have beaten the game, you can play with bots turned off. One player, this means no revives.

I’ll be glad to answer questions, concerns etc. when I can. Post/Flame away.

Btw—I would say it’s definitely a bit more L 4 D/TF/Tribes with Ants than COD.

Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon

June 28th, 2011 - by Brian!

When it was announced Vicious Cycle would be bringing us EDF: Insect Armageddon, an all-new installment to our beloved (and kinda stupid) series, we loyalists of EDF were cautiously excited. The original* EDF 2017 is a series of happy accidents. Its a great game specifically in spite of itself. How could mere mortals hope to get that magic to work a second time? And on purpose?

As it turns out Vicious Cycles HQ is a short drive from my home. So, I took it upon all us EDF fans to drive down there, kick in their goddamn doors, and play the game for myself to see if theyre going to deliver the goods or totally screw us.

Its hard to sell people on Earth Defense Force 2017. Its a (barely) HD conversion of a budget PS 2 title for the Xbox 360. Everything about it is cheap. Animations, models, textures, voice acting, everything: it looks like something they put together over a weekend on a dare with about ten bucks.

And yet EDF 2017 is fun. The gameplay is simple but addicting. Kill insurmountable waves of bugs, get loot, do it again with bigger explosions. Think of a tower defense game with hordes of bugs the size of buses, giant robots and Godzilla monsters, and motherships best measured in city blocks.

Also, theres no towers.

Also youve got two guns from a potential list of over 170. Some of them are straight up machine guns and grenade launchers while others are homing missiles that move slower than you run. And they have nuclear warheads. And they can hit you.

Its an acquired taste.

EDF 2017 enjoyed an intensely passionate cult following here in the States, yours truly among them. Weve spent a good deal of time lamenting the impossibility of a sequel. We dont want much, really. Just online play and the originals rough edges smoothed over without losing its charm.

Its a more difficult balancing act than it sounds. I mean, how often have we seen a beloved game get a sequel that completely misses the point? Id say every Devil May Cry thats not the original**  good games though at least one of those may be  falls squarely in that camp.

What if the impossible happened and we got a true EDF 2017 sequel? More likely than not, theyd completely miss the mark if for no other reason than the publisher thinking their marketing department is worth listening to*** and thus demand a slew of changes to make it a safer investment with wider appeal. What if it was, yknow, like every other shooter? A manageable number of enemies on screen? Realistic weapons? Indestructible environments? A story?

Itd be like listening to a symphony being played just slightly out of tune.

I had a full afternoon with Insect Armageddon. This wasnt a press demo. It was the game itself. In its raw form. Behind closed doors (they were closed again after I kicked them). Just me and good people at Vicious Cycle and the door repair guy.

Here are my unfiltered thoughts.

HOLY SHIT.

They got it. Id read some interviews online where Vicious Cycle folks talked about being fans of the original and wanting to stay true to it. But, yknow, thats exactly what you say when youre trying to assuage fears of a rabid fan base. But, wow. Having talked to these guys one-on-one, having played their EDF with them, and talked about what was different and why, these guys get it.

I dare say the impossible happened twice for this game. Not only did we get a true EDF sequel, but exactly the right people were chosen to be its shepherds.

Everything they added or changed is an improvement. There. I said it. Some hardcore loyalists will balk at this or that, Im sure, but theyre being overly nostalgic or unrealistic. For this game to have an honest chance at succeeding in the American console market of today, you could not possibly hope to release a carbon copy of EDF 2017. Changes were going to happen. The end.

Heres a short list of what did not change:

1. Huge swarms (press vids thus far fail utterly to show this) 2. 300+ weapons ranging from incredible to absurd 3. Constant claustrophobic horror from huge swarms. 4. Giant monsters with more HP than God to fight while also fighting the huge swarms. 5. Blow up every single building. 6. The humor. Its intentional this time, but they didnt go overboard with it.

Online multiplayer is amazing and, really, the way to play the game. And, yes, theres still split screen co-op. Which I guess is the other way to play the game if your friends dont all live in other states.

Insect Armageddon is right around the corner, July 5th here in Merica and July 22nd in Europa. Pre-order that bastard if you havent already. Its only $40 and its better than anything else coming this summer.

I can think of no higher praise for Vicious Cycles effort than this: Insect Armageddon is the game EDF 2017 would have been were it made today with an actual budget.

*Yeah, I know its not the original, but its the original one we have on this side of the world so shut up.

**FUN FACT: Both EDF 2017 and DMC 1 have horrible voice acting that only enhances their appeal.

***No, they are not. You can have that one for free, Every Single Captain Of Industry.

****Weird. The blog takes out apostrophes when the entry goes live now. Confusing!

OK let's see—- enemy-wise Big FH, we have ants, spiders, wasps, ticks, evolved ants, evolved wasps, evolved spiders (the evolved ones are the metal ones), Bomber Spiders, Mantis, Hector 1 (the "little" ones), Hector 2, Gunships, Small Carriers, Big Carriers, Daddy Long Legs, and something really big we saw a blurry screen cap pic of on the forum the other day. The evolved versions are faster, stronger, usually have some degree of different attacks and hit harder. They are generally bad news. As far as turrets, they upgrade along with the Tactical Armor— generally they just get better overall as you level up.

Heavenlysheol— whether we do DLC or not really depends on how the game sells. That's all up to D3. Levels— five are in an urban residential type area, five are in an industrial zone, and five are in a downtown/financial district. There's a little bit of a story in each campaign, enough to keep the player moving and killing stuff. Most of them are 15-30 minutes long and all contain multiple objectives (mostly having to do with killing Ravagers). I know this is kind of vague-what kinda other stuff do you wanna know?

tlcain — Big explosions cause chug. multiple people making big explosions networked= unplayable lagged out game. Engineers made me go in and change a lot of the weapons i liked so they were more network friendly. The kind of chug that 2017 had in it wouldn't get past Microsoft or Sony these days and wouldn't be any fun at all online. That's kinda the bottom line. We've still got some big 'uns in there- and the DLL does have a pretty big one now when he croaks. He burns out and then blows up. It was unfortunately a necessary evil to tone em down a good bit from 2017. Some of the higher tier weapons— esp the Battle Armor grenade launchers— have some pretty burly booms and a real satisfying.

Mtpgamer— that split weapon acquisition method was a tough call, but it was done mainly to mitigate frustration and at least have to possibility of levelling through a campaign with your friends (using the armor of your choice) and continually being able to get useful weapons. We did try to hit a happy medium—I wanna say it's about a 2 to 1 ratio of purchaseable vs pickup weapons IIRC. Now you are more likely to grind experience/cash to buy weapons as well as do some grinding to get drops. Drops are totally random and you will most likely get lots of stuff you can't use yet— esp in earlier levels, and stuff for other armors. One thing to remember— in EDF:IA you level individual armors, not your character. It's definitely gonna take time and a lot of effort to get all of them.

more to come

Wow! Ok, I'll grab the ones i can answer quickly right now. They may answer some other folks' questions as well. Gonna try and make my way back through the thread, ASAP. be patient haha

3. "Air Vehicles"question : There are none (other than the Jet Armor and the fly-in lander sequences). Largely has to do with controlling draw, line of sight etc. and we wanted to make sure and focus mostly on ground/squad combat.

4. "Tall Buildings/ Structures, and Height Ceiling" questions: The Jet has a flight ceiling of (i think) about 40 meters and can get on some medium height buildings— again, draw, Lo D's, occlusion etc played into this decision.

5. "Sandlot Game Design Brainstorming Session" questions: That would have been more an engineering or art/animation question. Not sure if any early communication like that took place or not. Metal textures like theirs are not hard to do - we had similar textures on some early enemies and decided to go a bit darker. i think a lot of their effects etc came at the expense of overall level lighting/shadows etc.

6. "Alternate Just-For-Fun/ Classic EDF Mode" questions: Would have been great to do — as would Deathmatch or something similar! But, this is a budget title and we didn't have a real big team and we had to put all our resources where they would make the most difference.

10. "Level Boundaries/ Barriers" question: Levels are bounded by "Ravager Barriers" that are "very" briefly discussed in VO. They tend to be invisible from a distance but go transparent red as you close in.

11. "Fully Customizable Controls" question: Unfortunately not. You can do the typical stick invert as well as swap the sprint/dodge controls (right and left bumpers)

14. "Save/ Check-point Select feature, and Weapon Load-out Switch-up Stations" questions : There are no checkpoints, no in mission saves and no in mission re-equips. Team wipe= start over. If everybody dies right before the end— well, that's tough. haha.