When comparing Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair vs Broforce, the Slant community recommends Broforce for most people. In the question“What are the best local co-op PC games?” Broforce is ranked 10th while Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair is ranked 59th. The most important reason people chose Broforce is:
Destructible environments, large explosions, dirt and blood flying everywhere, scaling a wall with just your knife, shooting rockets larger than the body of a man, and many more over-the-top gameplay elements. Broforce is just a blast to play.
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 Extremely fun gameplay
Destructible environments, large explosions, dirt and blood flying everywhere, scaling a wall with just your knife, shooting rockets larger than the body of a man, and many more over-the-top gameplay elements. Broforce is just a blast to play.
Pro Excellent at co-op
Four players can join a single game both locally and online. It just feels really awesome spreading mayhem and destruction with three of your friends as blood, guts, and explosions surround you from all sides.
Pro Varied characters keep the gameplay fresh
There are more than 20 different unlockable characters to try out. This keeps otherwise really simple gameplay from going stale as fast by allowing you to enjoy a variety of playstyles.
Pro Great references to the 80s action movies
Much like an 80s action movie, the violence, destruction, and plot are all overly exaggerated. The playable characters are the members of an underfunded, under equipped military organization that somehow outguns everyone else. Their bullets seem to have the magical property to explode everything they come in contact with. There's also an insane amount of explosions and blood everywhere. Even their names are references such as Brobocop (Robocop), Bro Lee (Bruce Lee), or Brominator (Terminator).
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 Can be pretty difficult
You can be killed by just one bullet, which creates a trial and error type of gameplay where you have to perfectly memorize all enemy locations and/or movement patterns. This gets multiplied by a hundred during boss battles, so after dying a lot of times you might start feeling frustrated.
Con Dying in co-op can feel a lot more punishing than it should be
If you run out of lives in co-op, you'll be forced wait until your teammates revive you by freeing a prisoner or until the level ends. If you're not very good at the game, this might happen a lot more often, which just turns into you watching others play the game and not playing yourself.
Con Poor character balancing
Some characters are obviously better than the others, or are highly situational. For example, the shotgun wielding character has really low range, so sometimes it's really hard to take out the enemies before they rip you to shreds from afar.