When comparing Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair vs Rayman Legends, the Slant community recommends Rayman Legends for most people. In the question“What are the best local co-op PC games?” Rayman Legends is ranked 11th while Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair is ranked 59th. The most important reason people chose Rayman Legends is:
The visual mechanics in the boss stages are pretty impressive as they use 3d rendering but still hold to the 2D graphical look of the game. This allows for bosses that weave in and out of stages as well as attacks that can come from the foreground or background depending on where the boss is located.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Fun theme that does not take itself too serious
Much like a B movie, the game is themed as a low quality experience with dated looking graphics and a convoluted/outrageous story. The premise being, you are one of four playable characters whose job it is to destroy the onslaught of invading alien giant insects. There is little beyond this to be fleshed out, it is more aimed at being mindless fun. Luckily the little bit of story and dialogue you do get in the game often is a bit tongue in cheek, as it the game is often self aware of its role to play.
Pro Endearing pure action gameplay
The premise of the game is to constantly be blasting giant alien insects in a slightly open world environment. Each level starts in a large sandboxed open world arena where alien insects will swarm the area. It is up to the player and the character they choose to use (of which there are four choices, each with their own skills/powers) on how killing these creatures will be carried out. Some of the available weapons for the different characters will be things like hand grenades, rocket launchers and automatic rifles. These weapons will be used in order to kill as many of the alien creatures that you can. Somewhat of a mindless style of play, blasting away anything that moves, but is appealing in its design due to the destruction that can be carried out. Each stage allows for compete destruction of all of its structures, meaning if there are enemies behind a building, you can just destroy the building in order to get to them. Overall the gameplay is quite fun and quirky in its B movie theme and design that allows for a never ending flow of creatures and areas to blast your way through.
Pro Good co-op support
Players can play together locally and online in a cooperative manner, helping each other to defeat giant insect aliens that are attacking the city. The local co-op can be played on different devices (LAN) or even on the same device through split screen. The online multiplayer allows for easy access to friends and random people in order to play together.
Pro Solid PC port
EDF is a pretty good port for PC (originally a PS2 game ported to PS4) with a constant 60fps during gameplay (no matter how many giant insects are on screen) as well as good keyboard and mouse controls with a few PC centric settings to be found in the menus such as anti-aliasing (only on or off). This is all able to be done in full HD (1080p).
Pro Visually impressive boss stages
The visual mechanics in the boss stages are pretty impressive as they use 3d rendering but still hold to the 2D graphical look of the game. This allows for bosses that weave in and out of stages as well as attacks that can come from the foreground or background depending on where the boss is located.
Pro Daily and weekly online challenges
There are daily and weekly online challenges that users can compete in, against their friends or just the high scores listed.
Pro Fun cute characters
The cartoony design of the characters is animated smoothly and looks great on screen. For each their design is cute an amusing while also showing differentiating characteristics.
Pro Up to four player local Co-Op so you can help children through hard parts
Up to four local players can play sharing a single screen at the same time in Rayman Legends which is great for when kids get stuck on hard parts as another sibling or parent can jump in and help them out.
Pro All powers unlocked from beginning
Unlike Rayman Origins, Legends has all of Rayman's powers unlocked from the beginning. Players are able to jump float, wall run and attack starting at the first level.
Pro One of the best platformers released in years
From the beautiful design of the 2D cartoon graphics to the level design, soundtrack and multiplayer, Rayman Legends is on par with the best of platformers.
Cons
Con Not a ton of polish
While a mainstay of the series (and some would argue the whole point of its design), the polish of the game is a bit rough. Voiced AI is constantly repeated and poorly delivered. There is little story to be found and the graphics, while playing at a constant 60fps in full HD, leave a lot to be desired.
Con May not appeal to everyone
The gameplay can get a bit repetitive and the lack of polish may be a turn off. While there is a good bit of content, many may not want to spend the time with a game they consider cheap looking that has little incentive to play other than mindlessly blasting away giant insect aliens.
Con Jump is floaty
The jump action feels a bit floaty which may take a bit to get use to. Normally platformers will offer tighter controls, which people tend to get used to making games that stray from that more difficult or just not something that appeals.
Con No online multiplayer
In this day and age it is disappointing to see a multiplayer game released that does not support online. For a company like Ubisoft this kind of cost should not be an issue which makes it puzzling as to why such a standard feature is missing.