Earth Defense Force 2017, the first game in the Chikyu Boueigun series to be released in North America, was, at the date of its launch, the most fun game released so far on Xbox 360 this year. It’s not a game made for the modern video game reviewer, as it has a host of technical problems, but it’s just so fucking fun that only the most jaded of gamers will be able to deny it.

The twenty-two man development team over at Sandlot knew exactly what they were capable of making with this game. It’s clear from the first time you play that this is a low budget game, the frame rate often dips below the acceptable rate, it has painful cut scenes and voice acting (I’m sure done by the localization team at D3), and clipping problems. The graphics, on a technical level, might have been impressive three years ago, and the animation is right out of the Nintendo 64 era. All that being said, the game barely suffers for any of it. Sandlot used the 360’s power for, instead of making the game a technical beauty, rendering dozens of enemies, having draw distance to the horizon, and scale unlike most games can even dream of.

Earth Defense Force 2017 is a game about blowing up robots, giant insects, and UFOs. For this kind of game to truly succeed it needs three things: to not take itself seriously, have co-operative play, and plenty of fun weapons. Thankfully EDF 2017 passes the test with flying colors. The art style of the game is much like that of classic Godzilla films and Ultraman, and it feels incredibly natural. The split-screen co-op plays as well as you’d expect it to, and while there’s no online co-op, playing sitting right next to your friend is more fun anyway. The handful of vehicles control terribly and are basically a joke, but are easily ignored. The 150 plus guns you unlock as you play though the game’s six difficulty settings aren’t at all inspired, but are extremely fun and satisfying to use.

From the first time you shoot a rocket launcher at a skyscraper crawling in giant red ants and it falls to earth, killing the insects that inhabited it, you’ll be sold on Earth Defense Force 2017. It succeeds in a world where gameplay is king, and piss-poor presentation is completely acceptable in some cases. If you go in with the right expectations you should have a shit-eating grin on your face as you blast through the game; it’s wholly worth your thirty-nine US dollars.