Joyful destruction and arcade shooter appeal allow for lighthearted diversion despite a somewhat superficial makeup
In this case, Earth is the fictional city of New Detroit, and the defense body Lightning Alpha, the EDF trooper to lead with two squad mates the elite "Strike Force Lightning" in order to thwart the alien invasion manifest in endless waves of bio-engineered giant ants, spiders, ticks, mantis, and wasps, along with huge mech walkers and space ships looking from beneath like skulls.
The story organized in three chapters with five missions each begins with alerting of a Ravager invasion entering, then bombing the residential sector of New Detroit. After being evacuated Lightning and his squad mates are deployed in the industrial area to investigate the increasing EDF casualties, first of all, the downed landers only one of which is salvageable, piloted by the frivolous Captain Sully who later comes back to insta-rescue Lightning and his crew. Back to Central Field HQ after using "The Cube" to detonate the defeated Ant Queen's nest, Strike Force Lightning is to confront ever huger "Hectors" (Ravager Mechs) until getting picked up through Sully who drives this last lander just into the more-than-giant space ship carpet bombing New Detroit... Lightning survives, but the story which as such gives a more positive idea of the EDF's activities like comparably the Red Faction series, remains open end: maybe another sequel is yet to follow.
Four different colorful armor classes –Jet, Battle, Tactical, Trooper– and 300 collectible weapons –shotguns, assault, sniper rifles, rocket, missile, grenade launchers– thankfully facilitate the task in this rather original 3rd-person shooter whose arcade-style scoring and up-levelling system makes replaying truly rewarding both off and online, as more as providing additional Hard and Inferno difficulty levels with and without AI bots after a challenging first pass.
Armor loadout each of which levelled up independently can be switched in-between missions: so while the versatile "Jet" booster certainly is the most thrilling option of the four individual classes at disposal, the heavier armored "Battle" might be the safest bet for his higher resistance to spitting insects and trampling robots, whereas the "Tactical" gear is to prefer for providing faster movements and useful deployable turrets, mines, and sensors against the ravaging enemy offensive. The fourth type, the all-round EDF standard "Trooper", on the other hand, has access to a number of unique weapon variants and is also the only one available in Survival Mode – for whom the yet not too easy game through its sheer endless number of buggy enemies, the scattered medi-kits in addition to inevitable squad mate reanimations, and the fact of offering no checkpoints during the about 20 minutes lasting missions, has yet not sufficient challenge to offer.
While the player embodying Lightning Alpha (Steve Blum) gets the more explicit orders from the severe female Ops (Parminder Nagra) and the evasive Intel (Jim Ward – "Oh sorry, it's just so fascinating"), the elusive voice-overs are simple-minded as reduced to some marginal statements ("What are these things?"), hence this is surely no game for lovers of lengthy conversations and sophisticated dialogues. But on those who like fighting uncommon enemies in an incessant fast-paced action this game manages to exercise an almost hypnotic attraction even on second sight, and despite its many visual flaws. So if the graphic display is a lot better than in the prequel, Earth Defense Force 2017, visuals, mainly an average town's faceless settings, still look rudimentary and almost "cheap" in design, with easy rendering problems whenever, and this is almost permanently the case, in a dense combat situation: superposing structures add to huge fires and dust clouds making aiming accuracy often quite haphazard. But there is nonetheless an intense pleasure to get from those laughably chaotic battle scenes in which cars explode and buildings collapse like paper toys, and why finally invest that much in meticulously designing an environment yet totally "under destruction"...
The game can also be played in classic co-op split screen mode, which might be more entertaining than single player alone although the quite well-functioning friendly AI lets one sometimes almost forget that the two squad mates, Cyrus (Avery Kidd Waddell) and Kicker (Nolan North), aren't real, and offers also a remix of the unlocked fifteen campaign missions both off and online (quick/custom match).
Sound design (Mark Reis) and music (Rod Abernethy) contribute well to depicting the drama and chaos of a city collapsing under the bugs and bombs of an alien invasion, though it is a game evidently providing a joking rather than shocking sci-fi diversion.
And of this the action-packed Insect Armageddon has rather a lot to offer its joyfully destructive approach and arcade shooter appeal allowing for a satisfying gameplay experience underneath the story's somewhat superficial makeup.