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Earth Defense Force 5


Sly Reflex
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Hard is OK as long as people that are in the game have armour and you're working towards clearing out bits of the maps. It's a definite step up, you have to be more with it when it comes to prioritising and focusing enemies.

 

It also helps when people take good load outs as well. I took a lock on beacon for the mission where you're put against the flying reds and it made it a lot easier that all the missile using members of the team spent all their time shooting at the one that would allow them to lock on all their missiles instead of trying to tag each ship once. It always works out better to pick one of those drones and pressure it until it is dead rather than do a little bit of damage to each one, since they're capable of out damaging you easily, it's way easier to survive the shots if there's less of them shooting.

 

I think when we play we will be going on hard @AndyKurosaki. You should have the armour to be able to take a few shots now, as well as some levelled up guns. The only normal play through I will probably do now is so @regemond or whoever wants to join (maybe @Whiskey_chaser?) can find their feet and then once they've done a completion go to hard and never look back.

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Yeah my Ranger armour is just over 900-ish,so I’m not too bad. Got some decent weapons now as well.

 

I definitely go for the “shoot til Dead” mentality,especially with the Armoured aliens,as leaving them alone leads to them regenerating and making you regret not finishing the job.

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3 hours ago, AndyKurosaki said:

I definitely go for the “shoot til Dead” mentality,especially with the Armoured aliens,as leaving them alone leads to them regenerating and making you regret not finishing the job.

 

You can use the regrowth to your advantage, as well as keep mobs down for longer if you  understand how damage against them works.

 

Head shots do the most damage. Body shots do the next best. Limb shots take a bit more, but they incapacitate the mob.

 

However the limbs are made of two parts and when removed from the body do set amounts of damage to the enemy. So shooting out below the knee will allow you to shoot off below the other knee and then both thighs and then the forearm and upper arms which will often result in a kill. Sometimes all the limbs will pop off when you use explosives, but I think this is doing damage to the upper limb so extra damage needs to be piled into the trunk.

 

That works for frogs. Greys are different because they wear armour. Damaging armour does 0 damage to the mob itself, but it opens the part you have exposed to damage.

 

However using the regrowth thing you can get rid of armoured parts with well placed shots. Upper limbs when they are broken off will not replace the armour on the lower limb when they regrow, and since those lower parts will be unarmoured it's going to be easier to delimb them further down the line and cause a set amount of damage to them, even if you miss and break off other parts of armour.

 

I've tried several different methods when it comes to the big guys and taking off at the legs is the best way practically every time. Unless an air raid has smashed off the helmets of the armour wearing ones going for leg or body shots is the best way to go about dispatching them. If they're miles away you don't have to worry about confirming the kill, that's only when they're on top of you, or you are on top of them. When those ones you have knocked the legs out of are on top of you it's a lot easier to control them if you can take them to the ground, which body shots or head shots can't do.

 

So yeah. Leg shots are the way forwards.

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See I don't actually know if explosives are the way forwards for that, since I'm not really sure how it's applying the damage and if any multipliers are present when the splash hits. I tried testing it to see if explosives did more damage to armour but it was inconclusive. I found the quickest way to  remove armour was point blank shotgun blasts and sniper rifle hits since they targeted a singular piece and shredded it off in a magazine or less, not including the fat lads.

 

Look at the armour as a red ants health pool. When you rocket it  it usually absorbs the first few blasts and then dies in the 3rd or 4th hit. You don't really have that with the other high burst damage weapons. You hit them once or maybe twice and they die. The difference is one requires you to be accurate and the other just makes you be semi accurate and lets the blast radius do the rest of the work.

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For the most part I’ve been using a really powerful assault rifle,and rocket launcher to get the job done. With the occasional use of shotguns,which are a right laugh.

 

I tried the Air Diver class for the first time ever,on an earlier mission . Equipped a decent plasma cannon,and rifle. Fired a few shots in a town area,and very quickly levelled the place. Off to a good start then ?

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  • 1 month later...

I've been making my way through hard with randoms and playing bits and bobs where I've missed medals out. Mostly this is anything but Ranger. 

 

The Wing Diver feels like they've taken on criticism that she was too easy to play before so they've made her harder, but by making her skill ceiling higher they've made it more interesting because it's no longer a case of flying right in, pissing out your load all over the enemies and then flying out before they can retaliate. She feels a lot more hit and run than she did previously. There were points in the older games where you could be up and in their face all the time because of how a lot of her weapons worked. To some extent you can still do that very occasionally, but it's much harder to disengage when things go south. I'm not sure I like having to act like a predator with her. The whole pre-charging of charged weapons really jars against all those years where I've built up a muscle memory on what I can get away with. She's always been the glass cannon of the crew but instead of having to just go do what you want now you have to have a bit of premeditation.

 

Of course people that are coming into the game and being told she is the easiest to play are falling down and spending most of the missions laid on the floor calling for help. That skill ceiling increase might have made it more interesting for people that are veterans of the series, but it's really dicked those that aren't and are just looking for the more mobile class.

 

The biggest surprise is the Air Raider. I fucking hated this guy in previous games, but here they've reworked him into a complete and utter god. Before I'd sigh whenever anyone picked this guy because I knew I'd end up picking up the slack, and to some extent I still do feel like that when not playing missions that have the sky visible. But when the sky is visible, fuck me, the fireworks that fly. Before I'd feel like a spare part that was occasionally chipping in but now when playing the Raider I really feel like I'm contributing all the time in some way of another.

 

It seems that Sandlot have actually worked out strengths and weakness balance for the Raider too as with any other class there's enemies he's completely hopeless against, but it's more balanced than it once was. He's no longer just the big boy buster, it's nice that they actually looked at how shitty he was at general mobbing and made it so that he could hold his own corner

 

Fencer is pretty ridiculous as well. Check this out. Fencer gameplay on Inferno mode.

 

 

You get people that complain he's too slow...

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  • 2 weeks later...

When people play an EDF game they normally complain that the armour comes too slow. There was a point in our 4.1 play through that @regemond got to a point where the armour cap started rushing off into the distance and that that opening made some of the onslaughts hard to cope with.You had to go back to previous levels and replay them to grind armour.

 

I had a look last time I played and I've already passed the armour cap for hard on Ranger. Off of one play through on normal and then about 50% through hard with each class I'm already set I think for quite some time. If I carry on I'll be set for hardest. The other classes are trailing a bit, but not so much that they're not all way above the armour limit for where they are in the completion.

 

It looks like the armour economy as well as the armour share on mission completion is really helping out. I feel no pressure switching to another class if needs be since they're generally armoured to a workable extent as well as having weapons unlocked and upgraded.

 

I do wonder if that gap will open up at some point? I didn't think to look and see if that curve escalates at any point. If it doesn't this is probably the best balanced EDF in regards of pick ups and mission difficulty.

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  • 1 month later...

So, EDF 5... What can I say that hasn't been said already?

 

Look, if you want pointed commentary at the state of the world today, you won't fi-... Ok, you know what, you will get that here... Let me try again...

 

If you've ever wanted to play a co-op Starship Troopers game, you're best looking somewhere el-... wait, ok that's here too...

 

Have you ever thought about blasting a skyscraper-sized frog in the face with a shotgun? Nah, that's definitely not gonna be programmed into a gam--... fuck, ok, yeah, you can definitely do that.

 

Basically, this is previous EDF games given a bit of a tune-up, a little bit of a rebalance and sent out into the world. You already know if that's for you or not. Personally, I've put about 8 and a half hours in with @Sly Reflex, and I've enjoyed every minute of it. It's still doing the great thing where it introduces individual elements one at a time and letting you learn how to cope with them before blending them in with the stuff you've already encountered. It's a great system and gets nowhere near enough credit.

 

I'm having a lot of fun. especially with the shotguns. They seem OP to fuck and just cut through enemies like butter. Seriously, I had a fully-automatic shotgun the other day and I don't think I've had as much unadulterated fun for a long time.

 

Only 8-9 hours in like I said, but it's definitely something I'd like to spend a lot more time with. Whether I learn other characters or just end up murdering my way through every difficulty with the Ranger, I'm happy.

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15 minutes ago, regemond said:

Look, if you want pointed commentary at the state of the world today, you won't fi-... Ok, you know what, you will get that here... Let me try again...

 

I know this is semi joking, but just wait until further developments happen. Someone thought about this a lot more than they should have. The amount of shade that gets thrown about in the latter third is surprisingly political. It's also hugely crushing, because it's exactly what would happen.

 

I think it's worth playing the other classes if only to understand what they're capable of. You get to a point where something happens in game and by looking at what players have brought in you know what they're going to be able to do and if you're going to have to step in if something goes south.It's the whole "walk a mile in their shoes" thing. It'll also fill you in on missions where you know you're not the best tool for the job. Some of the mission design is balanced so that certain classes are pissing in the wind so each class gets a chance to shine.There's instances that will be presented to you and you'll be like "I wish I was playing another class or had someone playing that class right here with us" because that class will have either just unlocked something that's good to beat the level with or have the assets elsewhere to get shit knocked out.

 

And yes, the shotguns are the most OP shit I've seen since Gears. Just wait until you see the Wing Divers Stardust Cannons. They're complete overkill.

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So I've spent another few hours Friday and Saturday playing this with Sly. Having a really good time with it now. Still only mainlining one character, Ranger, and I feel like I'm learning his strengths and weaknesses so finding it easier to adjust my play style level for each level.

 

The main reason I wanted to post about it today, though, is because of something I mentioned online last night. The design of this game is fantastic in some respects. Ok, it's basically horde mode with a story attached, but the developers are really clever in the way they do things. So the first third of the game introduced ants, jumping spiders, wasps, flying drones and giant humanoids.

 

It's done in a really streamlined way, where each new enemy is introduced on its own in a couple of different situations so you can learn what they do and how they do it. You then get them mixed in with other enemies you've taken on before (so for example, the jumping spiders are mixed with the ants a few levels in). That's the entire first third of the game, and it ramps up the chaos more and more before trying to screw you over with a completely ridiculous mission.

 

I went a little in depth there but tried to keep it as brief as possible, and that's for an important reason - around level 40-odd, it scales it right back. Each mission is a little less intense. The war seems to be turning in favour of the EDF.

 

Then it starts introducing new enemies again. A new type of drone, a giant walking robot thing that can kick you across the map, new humanoid enemies and more. And it does this in the same way as it did previously. The new stuff gets mixed with ants, or thrown in with spiders. Fuck - the new humanoid enemies pair up with the old ones for a nice little combo that can ruin your day.

 

It's a really simple system, but not only does it give that feeling of progression, and the feeling that both sides are slowly ramping up their attacks/defences, but it's a much more organic way of offering training. At no point in the game is anything explicitly stopped and explained to you, except for little hints through the dialogue. You're left to discover everything. 

 

I've waffled on there. Again. But considering this is a 'budget' game, there's just so many clever touches that constantly impress. All that above is just one aspect. With one character. So gives one experience. The developers of this game are incredibly clever.

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I really like the ebb and flow, They feel cleanly chaptered where there's an escalation to a 'boss' and then as you progress through the game the bosses just kind of show up in normal play.

 

The clever thing is that each mob has a specific way to deal with it so when you come up against 2 or 3 things where you can't manage it with the load out you are allowed to take in, it makes you look at other middle ground weapons that might not be as good but you're going to have to manage with them because that's all you have.

 

It really shines when you have 4 players though. Each having a role and specific task with a loadout to match. That's EDF's strongest point.

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So hypothetically, if I wanted to play around with the other characters, what's the strengths and weaknesses of each one?

 

I like the look of the Fencer's 'run in, fuck their faces up, move on' style, but from what I've seen it looks really difficult to control him/work into a flow. I watched a video of the Air Raider too - he just looks like chaos personified... Stand back, request various bombs, watch carnage. Oh and turrets. Fun!

 

I've had a quick go of Wing Diver, and can see the areas she'd be useful for zipping in and out, taking stuff down quickly, dodging shit and basically making a nuisance of herself. Like a fly. A fly with big, elaborate guns.

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