This Xbox 360 exclusive from rookie publisher D3 makes no bones about its bombastic action gameplay. Invade Earth and suffer the consequences: an endless shooting spree reminiscent of days blowing up aliens back at the arcade. While there are a handful of glaring issues, it’s pretty hard not to find some enjoyment out of Earth Defense Force 2017.

You play as a soldier in the elite Earth Defense Force charged with repelling a nasty alien invasion. Massive spaceships are dropping gigantic bugs onto the surface and it’s your job to blast them back from whence they came. You start by exterminating huge terror ants and assault spiders, and then move on to take down all sorts of mechanical monstrosities.

53 three action-packed missions make up the single player campaign. Each mission essentially features the same objective: kill all enemies on the map. A few variations to this exist in the course of the campaign, but for the most part your responsibility is to shoot everything in sight. Earth Defense Force 2017 plays much like a coin-operated arcade game. No puzzles to solve, no complicated action moves to learn, no secrets to unearth—just plain, pure action. This works wonderfully, as long as you enter the game with the right mindset and don’t expect an epic adventure.

While the purity of the game’s action makes it enjoyable, it also leaves Earth Defense Force 2017 feeling awfully repetitive. Mission after mission, you sit there with your finger pressing down the right trigger, mowing down waves of alien invaders. You can equip different weapons to try mixing up the action, but this is only a superficial way of varying gameplay. The best way to break the monotony is to have a friend join up with you in the campaign. Since the game lacks any dedicated multiplayer modes, you’re only alternative to slogging through the campaign solo is to play with a buddy. Just like the arcade games of old, Earth Defense Force 2017 is much more enjoyable when played as a pair.

For its general lack of variety and repetitiveness, the game isn’t totally without depth. A shallow item collection system allows you to kill enemies for health upgrades and new weapons. Four types of items appear at random: small and large health kits, armor, and weapons. Small and large health kits instantly replenish your health during a mission. Armor permanently increases your health by one point, but only takes effect after you’ve cleared the mission. Your goal ought to be snatching up as many armor power ups as possible in any given missions. Since missions grow progressively harder, you want to boost your health to ensure your survival.

Equally as important as armor, weapon pick ups grant you access to new firearms. With a wide assortment of arms ranging from assault rifles to grenade launchers to special energy weapons, you get a chance to play with several cool toys. You won’t get instant use out of any weapons picked up during a mission; rather, you can equip two weapons before the start. The goal in doing that is to force you to think about your weapons load out before each mission so that you can best engage the enemy; unfortunately, the game forces you into using only a few powerful weapons in order to complete the more difficult missions as the campaign progresses.

For such a simple game, Earth Defense Force 2017 has a surprisingly fantastic presentation. From expansive cityscapes overflowing with gigantic aliens to underground caverns seething with bugs, the game goes big and looks good doing it. The sheer scale of some enemies is staggering, such as the quadruped fortress that literally towers over you. Even more impressive than the size of your enemies is how many the game manages to fit onto the screen. Hundreds of creepy crawlies and walking tin cans can run amok without any hitch in the framerate. The buildings are fully destructible—quick blasts from a rocket launcher can eliminate structures but, sadly, falling buildings fail to do any harm to the alien aggressors but at least it’s cool to watch, particuarly since Earth Defense Force 2017 is one of the few Xbox 360 games currently supporting resolutions up to 1080p.