Ever so often, a game from Japan that you’d think would be perfect for Western audiences never gets picked up for localization. Like, a game that harkens back to 50’s B-movie horror (in this context, referring more to the unintended scariness of such films’ very existence). Now that special effects are no longer the obstacle they then were–on the contrary, they are often used to and sometimes actually can salvage an abysmal production–why aren’t there more digital likenesses of The Blob that Ate Everyone, or Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, or especially Japan’s own movie-monster speciality, Godzilla?

That is, why not more games like EDF, a.k.a. Earth Defense Force 2017?

Part of a cheapo label in Japan called Simple 2000, EDF stormed the import scene on the PS2 a few years back, and someone took notice. (That would be D3 Publisher, I guess.) So they made a pseudo-sequel on the Xbox 360, and the alien bug-blasting adventure was, finally and happily, playable by the monolingually anglophone. (Admit it, importers: other than blowing up a Big Ben that was crawling with space ants, you had no idea what you were doing half the time.) Basic reading ability is a great boon in navigating the menus and for matching the plethora of weapons to the appropriate missions, but what you really need is your best trigger finger, and a small side of brains, for getting out of–and into–harm’s way.

Giant ants, jumping tarantulas, and walkers straight out of War of the Worlds–the end of the freaking world never made better interactive entertainment fodder. Such all-out poly-pushing worked the poor PS2’s legacy innards a little too hard, but looks a lot better on the more capable hardware; one can see the sacrifices, such as ripping the flying female character out of 2-player mode, more than made up for within a single 360 screenie. Moreover, 2-player mode shouldn’t slow this version to a crawl, meaning fun EDF before should be really fun this time.

Posted on August 22nd, 2008 by katie