TGS 06: Earth Defense Forces 3 Hands-On

TOKYO--Whom does humanity turn to when a massive fleet of alien ships descends on the planet and starts using gigantic mutated ants and spiders as their weapon of choice? One obvious answer here in Japan is the Earth Defense Forces. The EDF is back, stomping out gigantic bugs en masse, this time in the Xbox 360 version of Earth Defense Forces 3. We had a chance to try out the gooey fun for ourselves directly from the floor of the Tokyo Game Show.

Because there was a line to see the game, we were able to watch a few other players try out a huge open-ended urban level before it was our turn. The size of the cities seems to have greatly increased when compared to the older PlayStation 2 games. At the beginning of one level, our EDF hero is running down a huge main street, bazooka and machine gun in tow, as a commotion is stirring roughly 10 blocks away. As our hero ran closer, it was clear that the commotion was a herd of massive, angry black ants who were crawling all over the buildlings and generally wreaking havoc. What's cool is that even though our hero was so far away from the action, we could pop a few bazooka shells at the ants and start thinning the herd before he got close enough to open up with his machine gun.

Of course, lobbing all of those high explosives is going to be dangerous, not just for the enemies, but for the humans too. Not only can you injure yourself if you get caught in the blast of one of your rockets, but any building you hit with a bazooka shell will be destroyed as well. As a result, once the ant-slaying gets hot and heavy, you can expect to raze half a city block without blinking an eye.

As for the enemies themselves, the giant ants looked just as menacing as they did in the PS2 games, although they were composed of more polys and slightly better textures. That said, they're still dumber than, well, ants. They make a beeline toward you at all times and make little, if any, effort to get out of the way when you start filling them with hot lead. What the enemy lacks in brains, however, it makes up for in sheer numbers. EDF3 features tons of bugs are crawling after you in an effort to gobble you and other random EDF members up.

When we finally got our hands on the game, we wanted to try a different level than the black ant cityscape. There were several levels to choose from, including a red ant level, what appeared to be a robot ant challenge, and one where you could take on massive tarantulas, which is the one we tried out. Here, we were dropped into a huge open area, with very few buildings around us, and we were surrounded on all sides by gigantic hopping tarantulas (we didn't know tarantulas hopped, but now that we've seen it in a video game, it must be true). Before long, the terrifying tarantulas were trying to ensnare us in their sticky webs and generally paying for it with mouthfuls of RPGs and hot lead.

As we fought our valiant battle, we ran into a number of different item pickups, including weapon and armor supplies, and then it was back to the bug-blasting. The game does seem to employ some nominal physics this time around, not just with the destructible environments, but with the bugs themselves. Shoot a rocket into a group of bugs, for example, and the blast will hurl a bunch of them into the air. That's cool and all, but we really liked the up-close-and-personal spray of blood that would spray when we gave them the business end of the machine gun.

If the past is any indication, there's no way Earth Defense Force 3 is coming to American Xbox 360s. However, if you're looking to stomp bugs of a truly epic nature, and you own a Japanese Xbox 360, you might consider importing this one once it's released.