EDF is a goofy specimen: a third-person shooter heavily influenced by 1950s B-movies. Faceless aliens seek to wipe out the human race using a collection of monsters plucked straight out of classic sci-fi: giant ants, Iron Giants, tripods, Transformers, and kaiju, among others. Levels consist of varying assortments of enemies that must be exterminated to proceed. The storyline that links these levels together is largely inconsequential and dripping with cheese (clearly intentional: voice acting THIS campy does not happen by accident). Choose one of four classes, select your preferred overpowered superweapon, and see who among your friends can get ten thousand ant kills first.
I've put well over three hundred hours into EDF on multiple platforms and gladly recommend it to anyone looking for a fun, mindless shooter. Mowing your way across a battlefield with your friends, blasting hundreds of insect gibs and broken robots into the air with every step, is the kind of dopey fun that brings your inner kid out. But it's a cautious recommend, as there are a few issues holding this game back, chief among them its dependence on grinding. All four player classes - Ranger, Wing Diver, Air Raider, and Fencer - will start out with only a few hundred HP apiece and one or two minimum-level weapons. Health boosts and new weapons will be randomly dropped by enemies during levels; you have to keep playing to get more powerful. Thing is that the health boosts will only add a dozen or so HP per level, if you're lucky. There are a handful of levels which simply cannot be beaten, regardless of your skill, until you have enough health to tank enemy hits. You're looking at hours of gameplay before you'll be able to tackle higher difficulties, and you need to play those higher difficulties to unlock the best weapons. Each of the four classes levels up separately as well: points earned while playing as a Ranger can boost no one but the Ranger, for instance. Slowly watching your fighters build up and become stronger is satisfying, in much the same way as watching a Pokemon level up; but if that's not your kind of game, then EDF is NOT for you.
The game's other setbacks are not nearly as daunting. Weapon drops in levels are random, and not all weapons are equal; you are not guaranteed to get anything useful out of any one level. That said, a good number of the levels are relatively short, so its not too much loss if you beat one with little to show for it. If none of these things bother you, and if you're the kind of person that enjoys deliberate stupidity, then this game may be right up your alley. Definitely grab a friend for it: this game is best in multiplayer, with different classes tackling monster armies together.
