Fairy Tale Spotlight: Earth Defense Force

Earth Defense Force is a long-running series of games about a global military force's efforts to stop an alien menace from taking over Planet Earth. The series is heavily inspired by those campy Japanese monster films such as Godzilla. The majority of the time you are fighting giant insects such as ants, spiders, and those rolly-poly pill bugs, but later on, they introduce giant monsters and robots and even flying UFOs.

I actually own all of these games except for the very first one, called Monster Attack, which only came out in Japan. I freaking love this series. And there are plenty of reasons why someone might hate these games. The graphics are bare bones. The story is often completely ridiculous. The look and feel of it seems dated. Also most of the games are just rehashes of one another with a slight graphical upgrade. But time and time again, I keep buying them and playing them.

All those supposedly bad things are actually boons to the series. It's campy! It was entirely intended to be campy. It makes you feel like you are in one of those old, cheesy monster movies. They put you on a fighting force and fling you out into a crazy monster battle.

Now, there were two attempts to make this series more gritty. Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon was the only one from the series to be made in the USA. They took the same plot but overhauled it to be gritty and realistic. And they really did accomplish this well. The problem was that it made the game boring. The campy stuff was what made the game so much fun. The second it became a serious matter, everything became a chore.

The second time they did this was in the most recent game Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain. This worked out a little better. In this case, everything is written to be gritty but delivered in a campy way. I have been enjoying this version of the game. Also the reason it probably works is because Iron Rain was developed in Japan.

And I think Japan really gets the credit here. They gave us a wonderful budget series of games and made them so remarkably fun. I love being thrust into a monster battle with only an experimental assault rifle. I love ripping into them hard and fast. I love the mellow drama of the voice acting. And most of all, I love the moment when all the other men fighting along side me all start crying out, "EDF! EDF! EDF!" Sometimes they even start singing during the battle! It's just wonderful. The lyrics are even on the screen if you wanna sing with them.

If you enjoy the old campy monster movies from Japan, this series is a great way to further your love for the genre. There is at least one game released for every system since PS2, and I have no doubt there are more on the way. Buy and play these games. They are wonderful.

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