At a significantly cheaper price than EDF 5 and running far better for good measure, we have EDF 4.1, the game which most people like to put as the pinnacle of the franchise. It shows its age for certain, but it still has hundreds of bugs to throw at you and hundreds of weapons to blow them all to pieces.
Story is negligible as usual. The bugs are back! As of right now, Earth has been attacked before by aliens and have successfully fought them off, but these new ones are bigger and even more dangerous, oh no! Half of humanity is gone in a month and you spend the entire game hearing about how there's no hope, except your squad doesn't really care and is the sole destructive force counteracting the alien's global offensive. You will be the first to discover that big glowy red spots are weak points and be the one to set the example that the rest of the NPCs will follow after months of in-game time have passed.
You have Guy with Gun, who has a lot of very powerful ones. Between rocket launchers, shotguns, assault rifles, and other things that seem quite mundane, you'll find some absurdities like a missile that takes half an hour to lock on but is the size of a three story building, a grenade launcher that fires 32 at once, or just regular guns with the stats tuned so high you're going to send bugs to the stratosphere with a single shotgun blast.
You have a Wingdiver, who has a jetpack, and her weapons derive their 'ammo' from the same energy resource that powers her flight, so you need some resource management skills to play her effectively. However, you do have some incredibly high burst damage at close range, as well as some very wide aoe coverage with plasma explosive weapons. If you can take the energy hit and have other people to divert the horde so that you can easily recharge, you can take the entire horde by storm.
Air Raider throws his little flares and calls in air support. The guns that a man can carry are only so powerful, but Air Raider has no such limits. The only thing that is limiting you is your 'credits' system, which is effectively a cooldown related to how many kills you're getting. So you will need other people to clear up the mess if you're out of airstrikes and there's a single red ant next to you refusing to die, but in hordes you are by far the most damage for the least effort.
Fencer is meant to be a slow moving tank, but bugs let him be a fast moving one. Dashes can be cancelled into a number of actions, most notably his reflective shield bash and melee attacks, which allow him to immediately dash afterwards. With these combined, you get the ability to kite a horde almost forever while also being able to turn around and whittle them down with a melee weapon of your choice. Then, when you're in the clear, Fencer gets two more weapons to swap to that are the heaviest and hardest hitting personal weapons in the game, between gatling guns or 50mm cannons or multi missile launchers or whatever the game feels like giving you.
It's a blast, but moreso with friends. It goes on sale sometimes, so if you can get it with a few buddies to share the fun with, I highly recommend it.
