Earth Defense Force 5

[Sly Reflex]

Hardest made us all die last night. I told you it'd get rough. 

 

Had to laugh at the veteran that joined and then left because he couldn't tank his way through it with his 20k armour because of the limits. 

 

I've purposely avoided that back in 4.1 when I played with @regemond because it teaches you how not to play. Struggling and working out patterns for enemies makes you a better player, having lots of armour and OP weapons sidesteps that. A lot of players are never tempered by having to get good, they take the route of least resistance by joining no limit lobbies, get carried and then hamper lobbies by being inept as fuck further down the line. 

 

When I get no limits you'll see 2 new types of player. One looking for a carry and another that plays nothing but no limits and just relies on huge wads of armour to keep them alive. The latter is better than the former, but don't mistake a long time played for skill. See how they react and how often their health dips, that's the true indication of a good player. 

[regemond]

I know I'm vastly underpowered right now but I'm really enjoying Hardest.

 

It's just fun. Even when you're getting mauled by spiders - and my god, do they fuck you up at this point - or just trying to work on taking down the immediate threats, it's just pure entertainment.

[Sly Reflex]

Yep. You two are now striding into the area where the game really shines. This is the no man's land that made me fall in love with the series. 

 

I can completely understand why people dismiss it before now, the front half of the game or more is nothing more than a camp duck hunt full of ridiculous gibberish exposition and laugh out lines that are pure slapstick. It's not until you scrap the top layer off and find the bit that really hits home how good of a game it really is. 

 

It really is a game of two halves. You've felt like a complete warrior up until now. Your mindset is going to have to change though, the bombastic nature of napalming the fuck out of these willing combatants is turning on its head. The invasion is something to be feared. It carries the weird jingoistic charm as Starship Troopers does, the soldiers are plucky but in reality they know what they're doing is the equivalent of being sent over the top like in The Great War. 

 

Listen to the command as they're constantly surprised you survived each mission. The connotations of the delivery of those lines changes, it's like when they slip adult jokes into kids shows, except what you're getting here is abject horror of a planet being genocided protected by a force that's woefully outnumbered, outgunned and under prepared. 

 

Earth Defense Force might not have good graphics, sound, controls or any of the other things people expect of games nowadays, but what it does have is an ace up it's sleeve for anyone willing to invest time into it. It really fills me with joy when people discover that ace. EDF is a proper rough diamond, but a diamond none the less. 

[Whiskey_chaser]

It's like the video game equivalent of Sons of Anarchy. The first few seasons vary from ok to absolute pap, but from four onwards it's superb. It's just trying to convince people to invest their time to get to that point.

 

And yeah, Playing on hard, EDF allowed you to be cocky. Playing on hardest it laughs at any attempt to be brash. 

[regemond]

3 hours ago, Whiskey_chaser said:

Playing on hardest it laughs at any attempt to be brash. 

 

I was just about to say I don't really agree with this, and that you can still be cocky, but basically any way I worded it made it sound like considered confidence. Which is the exact opposite of cocky. 

 

I feel like all the different enemies are needing different approaches now, rather than bring a one trick pony.

 

Grey ants - cannon fodder.

Jumping spiders - assault rifle, decent distance from them, don't get caught by the webs.

Frogs - rocket the fuck out of their limbs from a distance, take it up close with a shotgun if you can split them off one by one.

 

And that's just the ranger. I have no doubt that the Air Raider will handle all of them differently, as will the Fencer and Wing Diver. I'm definitely not looking forward to meeting the grey aliens in this difficulty though. Even on hard I didn't have a massively effective plan of attack besides all of us wading in and firing everything in our arsenals to take them down asap.

[Whiskey_chaser]

10 minutes ago, regemond said:

I feel like all the different enemies are needing different approaches now, rather than bring a one trick pony.

 

Grey ants - cannon fodder.

Jumping spiders - assault rifle, decent distance from them, don't get caught by the webs.

Frogs - rocket the fuck out of their limbs from a distance, take it up close with a shotgun if you can split them off one by one.

 

Gold ants - run like fuck

[regemond]

Yeah I discovered that tactic when I turned around in one level and there was about 8 of them just staring at me. Didn't even get the time to move or fire off a shot before I was taken down.

 

Nice introduction to the fuckers, though.

[Sly Reflex]

Mutants are scary. You can see the panic they induce in players when they hit the playing field. When they come it's like nothing else matters, they have to be taken down and they have to be taken down now. If that means ignoring another huge potential threat, then so be it.

 

Each unit has a purpose and how they intertwine with each other makes the game work. There's a mission you might remember, there's a few UFO's that are closed and loads of ants and spiders. After you've killed a few of them a queen ant or more shows up and starts showering you with acid. You might recall that there's a red flyer or two in that mission. Pretty much everything in that mission revolves around knowing where that red cunt is and destroying it as soon as you can will allow yout to progress. Issue is all the other stuff going on, the queens will be putting pressure on you, the UFO's will be open and dropping more bugs into the level with the aim of trying to overrun you. It's that really hard enemy that's taking free potshots at you while you've got a plateful that's the real kicker.

 

I think you both, @regemond and @Whiskey_chaser, have found ways that work for you. I don't know if you noticed, but depending on who we have in the lobby dictates how I deal with frogs and greys, as well as what I have equipped and how much health I have. If there's an Air Raider in the game I take the legs out, so gunships get a more accurate bead because they're not jumping and rolling about. Otherwise I disarm them and aim for the chest, since I think that's the quickest way to deal with them depending on how I'm playing. When you step into the other classes shoes you're going to have to find a way that works for you, part of that is going to come from watching other people and how they play, but also you're going to imprint yourself on the class. Even players that use the same loadouts play differently.

[regemond]

50 minutes ago, Sly Reflex said:

There's a mission you might remember, there's a few UFO's that are closed and loads of ants and spiders. After you've killed a few of them a queen ant or more shows up and starts showering you with acid. You might recall that there's a red flyer or two in that mission. Pretty much everything in that mission revolves around knowing where that red cunt is and destroying it as soon as you can will allow yout to progress.

 

I hate that mission with a passion at all difficulties.

[Sly Reflex]

I don't want to stress you, but I think that's the mission Dragon was saying silvers show up from the UFO, so the red drone might not be as big of a problem as it might have been previously.

[regemond]

It'll be fine. I'll deal with it. Only tenuously related, but this just made me laugh:

 

 

Apparently my brain is automatically starting to EDF things now.

[Sly Reflex]

Anybody that calls them anything less than fucking pricks has never played an EDF game.

[Whiskey_chaser]

I'm trying to think of an enemy in any video game that instills a sense of panic like anything gold coloured does in this.

[regemond]

I just hope there's not an alternative colour of the aliens. That's not gonna be a fun time.

[Whiskey_chaser]

If I see a gold cosmonaut, I quit. 

[regemond]

There's alternate colours of everything else. Why not the cosmonauts?

 

Oh god. That means there's probably gonna be new versions of the frogs too. Both the flying and walking varieties. Fuck sake.