Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain Review – Infantry Does The Dying. Once again, there is an Earth Defense Force game out there. Once again, it is not good. And once again, I couldn’t stop playing it. Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain isn’t good in the same way eating an entire bag of Cheetos in one sitting isn’t good. There is very little your gaming life needs in this game. But some days, it might be the only thing you want.
Despite a new air of seriousness at the outset, it doesn’t take long to realize that Iron Rain is still Earth Defense Force, and not necessarily some reinvention for the series. Yes, the giant bugs are still invading Earth. Yes, you’re a hapless grunt who must kill the ugly bastards dead for hours upon hours with an ever-increasing arsenal of weaponry. Yes, the story is still told by the most questionable definition of voice acting this side of the very first Resident Evil.
Yet, for more than 20 hours, I kept coming back to it. Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain is in the business of immediate gratification; it gives you a weapon, lets you kill a whole slew of evil critters, generously showers you with rewards in the aftermath, and lets you progress. No questions asked, no sales pitch, few if any barriers between you and the main thing the game does extremely well, which is letting you kill a hell of a lot of bugs.
The game tells you, “Your name is Closer, an EDF soldier. You’ve been in a coma for seven years, Now you’re awake, and we need you to kill every bug you see.” It shoves a gun in your hand, an assault rifle to start with, then drops you in the middle of a grudging facsimile of San Francisco and tells you to go to work. And you do. Giant ants come out of the woodwork within a few seconds. And for what it’s worth, these suckers are smarter in Iron Rain than in previous EDF titles; they know how to flank, how to surround, and when to run to a place of safety. But you’ve got an assault rifle, infinite ammo (for most weapons, anyway), and a grudge. You blast away, sending giant insect thoraxes and the disgusting green guts inside flying everywhere until the city is more dead bugs than street.
That’s mostly a good thing, since Iron Rain’s cities and deserts and forests are depressingly threadbare and devoid of any signs of non-alien life, but they are much less hard on the eyes thanks to some decent texturing and new lighting effects. The improvements are noticeable, but Iron Rain, like every EDF game before it, still falls short of current standards in the looks department.
That’s par for the course in Iron Rain. Most of the new additions–character customization, a Horde mode called Mercenaries–are nice, but they don’t fundamentally change what the series has been since 2006. Mercenaries in particular feels like a watered down version of Destiny 2’s Gambit mode. It’s a fun way to pass time, but without concrete goals beyond collecting as many gems from fallen bugs as possible, it’s not something to pump serious effort into. One of the only two major game-changers is the fact that weapons are no longer exclusive for the series’ traditional classes–for example, Rangers can now wield swords and missile launchers if you so desire. If anything, the character customization is a nice cherry on top, allowing you the freedom to create the insect-slaughtering war machine of your choice.
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