It’s awesome.

Bar none.

Anyway, once they were dealt with and I’d sent Microsoft a list of things that were wrong I played some EDF. I hadn’t missed it nearly as much as I should have done. it’s pretty much glorious. I’ve restarted on Easy to go through the game gathering weapons and health before jumping back to Normal.

Incidentally, the fans on this 360 seem noisier than my old 360, but the disc access is much, much quieter.

Apart from that problem I’m having a blast. I’m up to level fifteen now. I died a couple of times, but should be able to beat it with the correct weapon choice.

It’s really quite good. Frantic alien-blasting fun. Lots and lots of enemies, lots of weapons, nice clean graphics, exploding buildings, seemingly endless levels, atmospheric lighting and fellow soldiers whose b-movie shouts, while repetitive, really add to the experience.

You really haven’t lived until you’ve seen a tower block crawling with giant ants, levelled said tower block with a rocket and then switched to a machine gun to exterminate the ants.

Definitely seems to be worth the £17.99 Play are asking so far.

There are a three problems, though.

The first is that, like the PS2 version, the game’s full of both slowdown and framerate problems. It doesn’t spoil the fun and it’s better than the PS2 version was, but there’s a lot of it.

The second problem is, for me, rather more serious. There’s an option to invert the controls and it picks up the player’s setting from the 360, as it should… but then doesn’t seem to apply it to the tanks. (Possibly other vehicles, too, but I’ve only tried the tank so far.) Makes the tank pretty much useless to me in battle. This will be a pretty big problem if the vehicles turn out to be necessary.

The third problem is the most serious for me, but less serious for most other people – there’s a lot of stuff I miss from Chikyuu Boueigun 2. I love having the game English, but I miss London and I really, really miss the lady with the jetpack. It was great fun to go zooming about the levels instead of trudging around on foot. If you’ve not played Chikyuu Boueigun 2 you won’t miss her, but I do.

None of those problems make me regret buying the game, but I can’t ignore them.

Loads of striders plus huge numbers of mirrored saucers = death.

My death.

A lot.

Whichever character I use.

It’s really, really great.

Slightly unpolished, sure, but the core gameplay is superb and the graphical design is excellent. There’s an excellent sense of scale and of actually helping to fend off an alien invasion.

Unlike Zombie Zone, which was great despite being fundamentally a little bit rubbish, this game is great because it’s fundamentally a great game.

Still not convinced?

Tarantulas the size of four elephants! Great striding war machines! Swarms of small UFOs! Great huge motherships! GODZILLA!

It’s got great enemies, yes. And you’ve got great weapons to kill them all. And the levels seems endless. And endlessly destructable.

There’s nowhere you can’t go and nothing you can’t blow up, as far as I can see.

It’s just superb.

Shame about the framerate, the Japanese language and the annoying “you’ve killed a big bad” camera, but they’re hardly worth worrying about in the general scheme of things.

It’s great fun.

I’d love an English language option so I could kit myself out better and, yes, the PS2 can’t really keep up. And it’s very grey. And the camera could be better.

But everything else is brilliant. Huge ants climbing over Big Ben! Getting in a tank on a bridge and managing to blow the bridge up, sending me into the Thames below! Giant ants climbing all over an office block? No problem, just blow it up! Flying a jetpack around a giant ants nest that’s appeared in the middle of a city!

Excellent!