Hey, gang!
You remember 'fun', right?
"You seem very jolly, Basil."
"Hmm?"
"You seem very jolly."
"Jolly?"
"Yes, jolly.
Sort of... happy."
"Oh, 'happy'.
Yes, I remember that.
No, not that I've noticed, dear, no.
I'll report it if it happens, though."
Sure you do!
You know!
It's that thing triple-A releases haven't been since 2007!
The thing that causes Yahtzee to break out in hives in or around the same bodily orifice
that generates his opinions.
And perhaps no modern title since 2010's middle-market sleeper 'Deadly Premonition' better exemplifies
this long-dormant antiquated attribute from gaming's bygone glory... in all its unrepentant,
batshit splendor...
than Earth Defense Force 2025!
Sure, at first glance, it's a small-market third-person shooting explosion-fest with
a budget roughly the size of a dust mite's dick on a cold day.
But at second glance...?
Well, that's exactly what it is!
And that's fuckin' awesome!
Yet to describe this game as a 'shooter' is to do it a measurable disservice.
For one thing, in a practical sense, many of the game's weapons do not 'shoot' anything
at all, unless of course 'vagina-throttling unbridled badassery' counts as a fucking projectile.
In a wholesale inversion of modern game developer logic, EDF2025 - like each of the 5 games
that preceded it in this series - is a game defined, not by what untoward, jaggy bits
it's shorn from the core formula to placate a double-wide audience that no longer fucking
exists.
It's a game defined by what's been added to the formula, coupled with the series' trademark
incomparable motherfuckin' lunacy!
This game is ri-goddamn-diculous in the best possible regard!
The literal embodiment of everything great about Japanese video games... and the antithesis
of their latter-day downfalls.
What's that?
Kojima's releasing Metal Gear Solid 5?
For 60 dollars?
And it's 30 seconds long?
Here.
Have 85 fucking missions in your Earth Defense Force 2025 campaign!
For $50!
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: "I do the cha-cha... like a sissy girl."
Japanese games don't suck!
Hideo Kojima, Motomu Toriyama, and Kaz - fucking - Hirai suck!
And the games they produce, and/or fund, and/or sign the fuck off on suck, by association!
Fact!
Like every Earth Defense Force title before it, it's a case of excess... having a three-way
with bombast and decadence.
Why?
Yngwie Malmsteen will now explain precisely why:
"You know.
Remember: 'Less is more'.
And I always said...
how can that be?
How can LESS be MORE?
It's impossible.
MORE is more."
You're A-1 fuckin' right, Maestro.
Now for the love of all that's holy, apply that principal to filling your bath tub with
salon conditioner... and dive the fuck in head-first.
It looks like you thumb-wrestled with a motherfucking light socket, chief.
BioWare!
Eidos!
Bethesda!
IO Interactive!
Blizzard!
Square Enix!
Every developer that has ever removed a third of the original game, added two new gimmicky
mechanics and had the monolithic, heaving rhino balls to call it a motherfucking 'sequel'!
LEND ME YOUR FUCKING EARS!
Less.
Is not.
MORE!
MORE... is more!
Enjoyed having one soldier class in Earth Defense Force 2017?
Badass!
Here's four more!
Liked the weapon variety in earlier titles?
Here.
You're a walking fuckin' armory.
Go with God!
And don't forget your weapons level the fuck UP with you!
...and speaking of weapons, do you recall in my Rageaholic Movie Review of the 1985
Chuck Norris classic 'Invasion U.S.A.', when I opined... the following?
"Let me tell you something, Infinity Ward: If you make an FPS out of THIS instead of
another modern military game that invents new shades of brown...
I'll buy fifty fuckin' copies.
Especially if I get to play as Chuck Norris and wield a gun that shoots FISTS!"
Well wish.
Fucking.
GRANTED!
Not only does this game feature the use of a cybernetic motherfuckin' piston-fist large
enough to crack Jupiter open like a goddamn walnut... it also happens to be easily one
of the most potent items of weaponry in this entire ever-lovin' game!
I say let turbo-wimps like the Ranger and the Air Raider have their Assault Rifles and
lazer crossbows.
Because when you find yourself in an impromptu game of rock-'em-sock'-em robots with the
Iron fucking Giant at 1/1,000th scale, literally punching enemy fighter craft from orbit, you'll
be far too preoccupied with nursing an erection so throbbing large it interferes with local
cellphone reception to remotely give a fuck!
And while the graphics are a brand of 'ugly' more commonly reserved for members of the
English Royal Family...
they are nevertheless a significant upgrade from previous titles in the series.
Whereas Earth Defense Force 2017 looks like a goddamn PS2 game...
EDF 2025...?
Could easily be mistaken for a late-year original Xbox title.
So yeah.
Have a gold star.
Which isn't, of course, to say that EDF2025 is technically unimpressive.
Fuzzy textures or fuckin' no, witnessing literally hundreds of swarming enemies of every conceivable
configuration swirling and reeling above your head with only the occasional dip in framerate...
really sledgehammers the fuck home the immutable fact that - if Triple-A developers are indeed
being 'held back' - it's certainly not by 7th-gen hardware!
We live in a world where developers manufacture excuses daily... and actual games once every
4 years if everything goes right.
I can't imagine why software sales are down over 20%.
Pull up a seat beside the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat, because we have officially arrived
on the other side of the developmental looking glass, rageaholics!
But the unifying principle of the entire EDF series, at last polished and harnessed into
a blustery tornado of building-sized arthropods, kaiju robots and flying bitches in stainless
steel bikini-bottoms... is the same principle that began this very review.
FUN.
Earth Defense Force 2025... especially when played cooperatively with a friend... is mind-blowingly
fuckin' FUN.
A trait modern games are generating in exponentially diminished supply, these days.
So lap it the fuck up while you can, rageaholics.
I'm RazörFist.
God - fuckin' - SPEED!