Our Verdict
Earth Protection Drive 6’s high quality of life enhancements make for the strongest gameplay within the collection thus far, however an annoying intro and the identical glitches as normal go away it as a diamond within the tough.
Earth Protection Drive 6 makes a horrendous first impression. Opening with a stunted tutorial ripped out of the 2006 PS3 discount bin, Sandlot’s sixth mainline entry in its generations-spanning arcade shooter spends its opening minutes in a colorless, poorly rendered navy bunker. In comparison with the actual recreation’s frenetic, balls-to-the-wall motion, your introduction is a grating tutorial in one of many ugliest rooms recreation engines can render. You’re then pushed out into an already-razed surroundings that does little to excite.
After trodding by way of the primary half-an-hour of monotonous intro, EDF rapidly transforms into the high-octane, Dynasty-Warriors-With-Weapons everybody expects. In just some missions you’ll go from preventing your typical horde of large ants with the house recreation’s intro weaponry to battling gigantic bipedal frogs with laser weapons and battalions of bulbous androids straight out of a H.G. Wells novel.
In the same vein as your annual sports activities recreation, Earth Protection Drive 6 is a little bit too comparable to its numbered predecessor, even going as far as to borrow some missions from EDF 5 throughout its prolonged marketing campaign. Visually, it’s nearly an identical, and a lot of weapons and enemies are straight lifted from 5. Fortunately, alongside a wholesome dose of recent additions, Sandlot has delivered some sensible modifications and quality-of-life tweaks to make this the best-feeling recreation within the collection thus far.
Throughout the EDF 6’s 4 lessons — Ranger, Wing Diver, Air Raider, and Fencer — myriad modifications make for a slicker, extra fashionable gameplay really feel. Each class can now mantle over small obstacles, fixing a decades-old problem of getting caught in small corners, and partially used weapons now reload faster, which may simply be the distinction between life or dying on larger difficulties.
By far the most important enchancment comes within the type of the machine-controlling Air Raider. Early-game Air Raider gamers have entry to a slew of recent drones to ship forward and rain hell on the alien hordes. As you gather weapon containers and unlock new goodies, you’ll finally achieve entry to large air strikes that decimate the surroundings in an excellent sweep of navy would possibly.
However, whereas some enhancements have been revamped their incarnations in EDF 5, the flying Wing Diver remains to be in a bizarre spot. As one of many strongest lessons in early EDF, the Wing Diver’s historical past of nerfs has lastly resulted in some respectable modifications for as soon as. With entry to backpack gear, now you can make the most of shields or grenades whereas hovering by way of the air, however the class remains to be not as highly effective because the EDF 2017 model followers fell in love with.
However, each class remains to be enjoyable to play and so they all have their very own specialties that make them higher suited to particular missions. Whereas the Wing Diver is nice for large open maps, the plodding mech go well with Fencer with shoulder-mounted rockets and Gatling weapons is ideal for chopping by way of 1000’s of oncoming aliens in tense close-quarters fights.
Whereas it takes some time to hit its stride, Earth Protection Drive 6 finally blossoms into one of many collection’ finest entries. The extra you unlock and the extra freedom you get to experiment together with your seemingly limitless arsenal, the extra the sport leans into its arcade roots as you soar throughout the sky, unleashing large plasma cannon blasts onto a river of indignant hearth ants, leveling buildings in your path.
At its coronary heart, EDF is the last word B-movie, and never simply due to the supersized hornets. It’s the kind of recreation web commenters declare builders don’t make anymore earlier than booting up Valorant for the millionth time – a no-holds-barred dose of fine enjoyable ripped straight from the desires of Roger Corman.
The sport’s PC launch has not gone completely easily. These seeking to play the sport on-line with pals — split-screen can also be accessible on PC — might be requested to make or signal into an Epic Video games account, though this isn’t truly required. Moreover, I did expertise various crashes whereas taking part in the sport on Steam Deck throughout a number of variations of Proton, though efficiency is usually high-quality. Lastly, should you had been hoping for some kind of correct choices menu, look elsewhere. It’s simply decision and anti-aliasing right here.
Clearly, it doesn’t look nice, though spectacular explosion results and a few significantly gnarly gore and dismemberments do disguise the worst of it, and the sport is buggier than the swarms of alien bugs you’re tasked with battling, however Earth Protection Drive 6 by no means as soon as provides up its sheer lunacy to try to comply with some trade development. It is aware of precisely what it’s and it’s not altering anytime quickly, mechanically or graphically, and it’s simply as enjoyable as when the collection first got here to the West nearly 17 years in the past.
Perhaps EDF 6 is an acquired style, or perhaps it’s a collection destined to remain in cult traditional standing. Regardless of the case, there are not any different video games like Earth Protection Drive 6 – aside from its predecessors, in fact. If that is your sixth stab on the collection otherwise you’re a newcomer to this anime Starship Troopers, Earth Protection Drive 6 is the precise sort of diamond within the tough that avid gamers needs to be leaping on the likelihood to play.
