Hands On Earth Defense Force 4 – Those New Giant Spiders Are Tough!

D3 Publisher brought a demo of Earth Defense Force 4 to Tokyo Game Show and this game feels just like Earth Defense Force 2017. I started the demo as a Ranger, the standard EDF soldier, and blasted giant ants with a machine gun in the game’s first mission. Since it played just like Earth Defense Force 2017 with shinier ants, I exited the mission and started a new one.

I selected a mission with Retiarius, a new giant spider that spins webs between buildings, and picked the Wing Diver as my character. The Wing Diver’s main advantage is she can fly around. Her big disadvantage, at least with the default equipment, is her laser has a short range. I had to fly close to Retiarius before I was able to hit it and when I ran out of fuel my Wing Diver dove right into Retiarius’ web. I struggled to get out (flying and jumping didn’t work) so I kept shooting Retiarius until I killed it. That dissolved the web, but my Wing Diver was severely injured after the scuffle. I tried to snipe the next Retiarius by standing on a building. That strategy panned out better, but it seems like the Wing Diver is weaker than the Ranger.

Earth Defense Force 4 supports online multiplayer for up to four players so a Ranger/Wing Diver combination would have probably made this mission much easier. I also noticed the standard EDF difficulty levels from Easy to Inferno were in the Tokyo Game Show build.

I jumped into another mission with Hectors, humongous bipedal robots that have gun arms. I tried to take down a Hector using the Wing Diver and her attack range was still limited even though I changed to a different laser gun. I found the best strategy for defeating a Hector with a Wing Diver was flying behind the giant robot, unloading all of her ammo, then landing to cooldown the jetpack and reload. I took two Hectors out before my time with Earth Defense Force 4 was up.