Thank you, Badger.

"To save our mother Earth from any alien attack,
From vicious giant insects who have once again come back,
We'll unleash all our forces, we won't cut them any slack,
The EDF deploys!"


Most mainstream games journalism websites tend to declare that EDF 4.1 is "so bad it's good", much like the Beginning of the End (1957), and other relatively well known "giant insect" and "kaiju" b grade science fiction films that EDF so gleefully draws the majority of its inspiration from. I'm here to tell you that EDF is not "so bad it's good". While it may be based in some of the most delightfully cheesy media ever produced by mankind, the game is surprisingly well designed, and- most importantly- extremely fun.


In EDF 4.1, you and 3 other friends take on the roles of 4 z-list ground trooper grunts fighting as Japan's last line of defense against an unimaginably enormous fleet of flying saucers, quadroped fortresses, and countless other chromed out technological horrors taken straight from the nightmares of early to mid 1900s science fiction illustrators. These invaders have brought with them a seemingly never ending supply of horrifyingly oversized insects, arthropods, and arachnids.

You are what little the EDF can muster to defend against this onslaught, and shockingly, it absolutely feels like it. Even on normal difficulty, you and your squad will find yourselves leading daring assaults against tidal waves of oversized insects, outnumbered beyond your wildest dreams; fleeing desperately from hopelessly overpowered mechas the size of entire cities- and watching in horror as your tank line crumbles around you, leaving you, the pitiful infantry, flanked on all sides by enormous and deadly walkers.

And time and again, you will pull through by the skin of your teeth. You will find yourself totally immersed in this horrendously one-sided battle, where it really does feel like you stand absolutely no chance against the scale of the invasion.

One thing this game absolutely gets right, is the scale of the monsters, and how it feels to be confronting these beasts with just a handful of terrified squad members following you as you lead the charge. Third person was not only the smartest decision in terms of the gameplay, but also in terms of showing off the invaders. You are always forced to crane your camera upwards to look at basically anything that is attacking you, and in this, you automatically place yourself in one of the most well known forced perspective shots in film making. The tiny, powerless character standing before something so enormous it is incomprehensible.


Initially something I thought was going to be unbelievably annoying, as it assailed me instantly upon trying to navigate the menus with the arrow keys, was the built in voice commands menu. Ultimately, it turns out that this command menu may be one of the best parts of the entire game.

It's not just the fact that you too, get to shout npc lines and run around screaming your head off, it's the fact that certain voice commands will rouse similar reactions from the AI soldiers around you. Imagine for a moment charging into battle with an endless onslaught of giant ants, all the while singing the anthem of the EDF, or shouting out taunts at the thousands of insects piling into your position-- with even the dozens of npcs behind you joining in. It's actually flat out amazing. EDF really puts you in the shoes of your soldier and gives you a real sense of comraderie, not just with your actual friends or the random players who might join your lobby, but even with the AI.

Another excellent aspect of this experience is that, from a writing and story perspective, EDF isn't afraid to force the players into losing battles, or to illustrate genuine communication or strategic errors coming from your commanders as they babble over your headset about giant insects and tunnels. One of my favorite missions thus far is your first encounter with the giant quadroped fortresses, in which you, your friends, a couple squads of infantry, and only 3 tanks attempt to stand up to the single most powerful enemy we have yet encountered in the story. Up until this point, the campaign has largely been relatively easy missions of clearing out swarms of insects-- to the point where the player's are feeling just as over confident as the military they are working for. When we first played the mission, we thought the commander's calls to fall back and to retreat were totally ironic, and that we the players were powerful enough to save the day. Our hubris was met with a series of sudden, and stunning defeats, before we finally realized that the only thing we could do before this metal monstrosity's awesome power, was turn tail and run.

That's right, EDF puts you in the genuine position of having to just survive and wait for the air force to hit the enemy with everything its got. All you can do is hide from the roving bands of Hectors- the highly dangerous bipedal mechas- and do whatever you can to stall the fortress. Throughout this you're hearing stories about how other, better funded, EDF branches have already taken down their fortresses-- it's clear that your tooth and nail defense won't even be the first to win a fight, even while everything is being flattened around you.

Another great mission is your first encounter with shield bearers, giant crawling robots that sport "shield screens", which defend anything underneath them from attack. Naturally, only infantry are small enough to penetrate the shield and attack the shield bearers directly, so you go straight to work against the first unguarded shield bearer- an easy and exciting victory. This victory soon turns to horror as the invaders exercise the reality of their plan, keeping Hectors underneath the shieldbearers.

In this particular mission, the Hectors are geared up with machine guns, meaning that they are entirely deadly at close range-- but to defeat them, you have to get into close range due to the shields. It's a great strategic catch 22, and makes for an excellent battle. Add on to this the fact that the air force refuses to call off their air strikes, illustrating a disconnect in communications between the army and air force- leaving you, the ground troops, caught between a crossfire of friendly airstrikes, and harassing assaults from the Hectors.

EDF is filled with stuff like this, scenarios built from the ground up to make you feel like a hero fighting against insurmountable odds.


While EDF has some faults in the menus- mostly just being a bit confusing and, for whatever reason, the equipment screen getting steadily framier the more missions you play in a row- any negative criticism I could earnestly level at it is totally outpaced by the legitimately enrapturing experience it offers the player. This is easily the best co-op game I've played, and one of the best games released in the current console generation. EDF 4.1 is a must buy if you have friends you can play it with, and is absolutely delightful in every way.

"Our forces have now dwindled and we pull back to regroup,
The enemy has multiplied and formed a massive group,
We better beat these bugs before we're all turned to soup,
The EDF deploys!"

the engine is bad
the graphics are bad
the UI is bad
the controls are bad
the VO is bad
the animations are bad
but somehow
its perfect

First. If you played Insect Armageddon and hated it. At least try this game, as IA was a terrible game in comparison to the other titles in the series.

Simply put this game is amazing. Single player is fun and split screen or online coop is awesome. With a cheesy story and b tier graphics, sound, and pretty much everything, the game still manages to be plain fun to play. Very few other games can be this mindlessly enjoying. Destructible environment and hundreds of enemies on screen at once create a hectic experience that is better to play yourself than watch a video of.


Collect new weapons and increase armor across four classes while stomping alien invaders and their bug friends to bits, the only good bug is a dead bug. Each armor pickup gives your class chosen a small bit of armor for the next time you use them. Each weapon pickup has a random chance at one of hundreds of weapons per class you were when you picked it up. The game allows multiple playthrough by offering harder, faster, stronger enemies as the difficulty is increased, not only by playing later missions but also a selectable difficulty option per each mission. After obtaining more powerful weapons and increasing armor, you can then take on those harder settings. On those hard difficulties comes higher loot tables for better weapons. Across over more than 80 levels, there is a lot to see and even more to do.

With each player class playing different than the next, you are guaranteed to find one that suits you and your playstyle.

- An all around Ranger with assault rifles, missles, rockets, shot guns and snipers to name a few. A decent all around character. Has evasive rolls and decent armor. Can select two weapons for a sortie.

- A vehicle summoning and air strike calling support infantry Air Raider. Has building sized vehicles, or small tunnel crawling vehicles. Has health fountain support to heal allies and missile guidance support to help kill. Has claymors, mines and auto turrets. Harder to play than a Ranger, but rewarding and unique. Same evasive rolls and same decent armor as the ranger. Can select two weapons/support at once and one vehicle for a sortie.

- A guerilla type high-damage dealing Wing Diver. Using a jet pack and constantly recovering energy supply. You fly in, while managing your energy, deal massive damage and back off to recover. Weapons also use this energy, when you over use it your jet pack fails and weapons can no longer reload until your energy system cools off. Very light armor means certain death when you run out of juice in bug city. Can select two weapons for a sortie.

- A Fencer. A high armored walking vehicle-like humanoid suit. Can use incredibly large weapons. Hammers, spears, swords, shields, artillery, missles, etc. Can select two sets of two weapons at once, capable of switching between each set on the fly. The fencer has a jump boost or forward boost depending on his equipped weapon and his armor is unmatched.

The opposition ranges from acid spewing black ants. to tough armored red ants that grab you. To flying alien spaceships and wasps. To giant walking robots and walkers. There are plenty more but I won't spoil any of that. Plenty of variety in alien and bug opposition, to keep you always changing your loadout and tactics.

There isn't much more to say.

After hundreds of hours in the series (100+ on 2025, 100+ on 4.1, 200+ on 2017, 200+ on MA+GDF+EDF2) I will spend hundreds more on this pc version. It runs smooth and is by far the definitive version to play. New to the series or not. It seems to run very well even on lower end hardware (jokingly played it on a Surface Pro 1, and it actually worked at 800x600). Controllers recommended although mouse and keyboard work fine, I can see the controls are skewed to controller..


If I run into any bugs (lel) I will let people know by adding them as comments. As of now I have no complaints, as they have been fixed by the August 4th patch..


Oh and one more thing. EDF EDF EDF EDF EDF!!!

I blew up the city to stop the aliens from blowing up the city

My squad : wiped out
Air support : non-existent
Human population : Dying
ALIENS : DYING MORE
MORALE : HIGH
I'M FROM EARTH AND I SAY KILL THEM ALL

whoever designed the controls for helicopters should be shot

*Levels a city* I got the spider

The game has a lot of bugs.
Your job is to get rid of them.

PREREQUISITES
(1) A friend or two or three
(2) A healthy sense of humour and taste for the absurd
(3) A juvenile appreciation of titanic explosions, godzilla-scale destruction and B-movies

EDF is one of the most entrancing yet mystifying series in all of video games. A mechanical analysis of the game would center around its most prominent 'flaws':
- 80 missions with no coherent context, featuring similar city-scape sandboxes and nonsensical underground burrows
- Glitchy physics where giant bugs are propelled across the sky by your explosive weapons
- Hundreds of unlockable weapons and vehicles, many of which are broken to the point of being useless
- Voice tracks of screaming soldiers and moronic scientists that have no correlation to what's happening on screen
An analysis of systems and function would pronounce this game a dismal failure, and leave it there.

But only someone with no joy in their soul could miss the forrest for the trees and misdiagnose this game as anything other than a spectacular success. Every glitchy giant ant that you propel into the stratosphere is cause for mad giggling. Every weapon unlock is a thrilling lottery - you might find an orbital ion cannon painter that vaporises swarms of bugs, or you might be gifted a hilariously useless assault rifle that sprays two lines in a horizontal V pattern. Your vehicle unlock could be a colossal megazord mech that punches the freak out of elastic Michelin man alien robots, or it could be a motorbike with a side-car featuring the worst turning of anything ever coded. But in the spirit of mad experimentation, you'll jump into it anyway with your friends, and barrel into swarms of hopping tarantulas, cackling like maniacs.

Somehow you'll survive, with the city you've been entrusted to save now just flattened rubble. All civilians massacred. Your commanders over radio will declare your mission an unqualified triumph, and you will be whisked off to your next mission. Alien orb motherships loom ominously in the sky, dropships spew streams of ants, moronic attack drone swarms bumble and richochet off buildings as they attempt to strafe you with lazer globs. But you will hang your head high, knowing that you have nothing to fear. You are the EDF - the finest Earth has to offer against the alien menace. And you will emerge victorious.

Play this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game.