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Most disturbing video game...ever

Creepy crawlers star in Earth Defense Force 2017

Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
  • Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
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Dan Ackerman
D3

Last night, we got a sneak peek at one of the most disturbing video games we've ever seen, at a press event hosted in New York by game publisher D3. The company is best known for games based on kid-friendly Japanese licenses (Naruto, Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi), but Earth Defense Force 2017, for the Xbox 360, is decidedly less cheerful.

This shooter's basic concept--a lone hero has to fend off alien invaders amid sprawling urban environments--isn't new, but swarming armies of gigantic bugs that you have to fight took us by surprise. There is nothing more unsettling than watching bus-sized ants crawl all over a building or gigantic jumping spiders leap all around you.

D3

The blocky graphics underscore the game's budget origins, but the sight of hundreds of giant bugs on the screen was reasonably impressive, even to the audience of jaded video game vets watching the demo.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, the game hits store shelves March 20, as a $39.99 budget title.