Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon may have been something of a letdown to fans of its predecessor, fixing only a few of 2017’s faults and introducing plenty of new ones. A recent title update attempts to rectify some of those problems, but once again it breaks a few things of its own.
Release notes for both consoles:
Xbox 360 version
• Correction of problems when attempting to connect to public matches.
• Correction of an issue that places players in the wrong custom match mission.
• Joining Survival Mode games already in progress is disabled.
• Increasing Survival Mode difficulty.
• Battle Armor’s Pesticide Mortar will now be an impact explosive instead of a timed one.
• Removing time penalty for a failed Quick Reload.
• Player progression will now be saved in Survival Mode at the end of each wave.
• Pesticide Weapons disabled in all public network games.
PlayStation 3 version
• Correction of problems when attempting to connect to public matches.
• Correction of an issue that places players in the wrong custom match mission.
• Joining Survival Mode games already in progress is disabled.
• Increasing Survival Mode difficulty.
• Battle Armor’s Pesticide Mortar will now be an impact explosive instead of a timed one.
• Correction of a problem where players you played with did not appear in the “Players Met” list.
• Removing time penalty for a failed Quick Reload.
• Player Progression will now be saved in Survival Mode at the end of each wave.
• Adding the ability to make R1 your main trigger.
• Correction of a problem that causes audio to become distorted.
• Pesticide Weapons disabled in all public network games.
Looking at the list of changes, I’m certainly glad to see the Quick Reload penalty done away with. But why didn’t the developers just completely redo the mechanic? It’s a terrible imitation of Gears of War’s fun quick reloading, now just less terrible.
At first glance, Survival Mode would seem to be improved, since the game actually saves your stats between waves. But players can no longer join mid-game, which means games are doomed to small player counts since it’s harder for people to join now. Plus as Survival games go on, people will surely drop out, and they can’t be replaced. Basically it’s a needless and poorly thought-out change.
If you ask me, Insect Armageddon’s biggest gameplay problem is that enemies have annoying levels of health and grinding levels takes ridiculously long. Both of these issues stretch a thin amount of content (a scant 15 levels and way too few enemy types) just about to the breaking point. Neither problem has been addressed in the update. Hopefully a more significant update comes along to rebalance things some day.
Source: Facebook.com