Earth Defense Force 5 review for PS4, PC

Your eyes aren?t deceiving you: we are indeed reviewing Earth Defense Force 5 about two years after it was initially released in the West on PS4. This isn?t a case of forgetting to review a game, though. Rather, PQube have just recently released the game physically, which means that if you want to shoot giant bugs and robots but absolutely need to do so with a disc-based version rather than a digital version, you?re finally in luck.

As someone who?s loved this series for years, I was mostly pleased to see that EDF5 offers everything that I?ve always liked about the series. Destructible environments? Check. Big weapons that cause massive destruction? You know it. All kinds of bugs and robots to explode? Of course. Cheesy dialogue, iffy graphics, and a general B-movie aesthetic? I mean, it?s EDF. What else would this game be?

And yet, as I was mowing down the hundredth or thousandth waves of acid-spitting ants, I have to confess that part of me started to get a little bored with it. It?s not that the destruction is any less fun, since, I mean, it?s got all that stuff I mentioned above. How could a game where you can ?accidentally” lay waste to a city while blowing up spiders ever be dull? But it does get repetitive, and if you try to power through a significant amount of the game?s 100 levels (each with five levels of difficulty!), you may feel like you?re doing the same thing over and over again.

It also doesn?t help that some of the levels here are structured really oddly. This is apparent right from the get-go. You start off in an underground bunker, learning the basics, and then a couple of bugs suddenly burst through the wall. After blowing them all up — because, to EDF5?s immense credit, you get a rocket launcher right off the bat — the level ends…only for the second level to begin in exactly the same location. It feels like unnecessary padding, and even for a game that seems to take pride in being poorly-made, it?s a little much.

Still, if you?re looking for anything like logic in an Earth Defense Force game, you?re missing the point. These games are designed to allow you to blow up as much of the world around you as possible with a minimum of fuss, and, like I said, you get a rocket launcher in the very first level. Earth Defense Force 5 won?t win any awards, but if you want more of the same from this now-venerable series, it?ll deliver everything you could possibly be looking for.

PQube provided us with a Earth Defense Force 5 PS4 code for review purposes.