If Earth Defense Force 5 had paid DLC that put the Mystery Science Theater 3000 silhouettes at the bottom of the screen to riff on the on-screen action, I’d buy a Season Pass. Yes, the video game equivalent of a ‘50s sci-fi B-movie about shooting giant bugs and/or UFOs is back, and it embraces the cheese. It is dumb by design, and it embraces it, and after playing a handful of missions in both EDF5 and its cousin title Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain, I couldn’t help but have fun.

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Graphics? Not great. Controls? So-so. Voice acting? So, so terrible that it’s actually delightfully fantastic. I’ll bet they had a ball at the voiceover recording sessions. And that’s the beauty of this series: it realized a long time ago that if it stopped taking itself seriously and leaned in the opposite direction that it could be something different and unique. Earth Defense Force 5 is the ultimate palate cleanser from whatever deep single-player experience you’re currently soaking yourself in.Choose your mission, your weapon loadout, and your hero class, and off you go. Missions take approximately 10-15 minutes each, so it’s easy to jump in, blast some bugs or wreck some UFOs, and get out. And what makes EDF5 (out later this year) such crazy fun is that you’ll see dozens upon dozens of bad guys on the screen at once. During one mission where I was gunning down UFOs (see video above), I was surrounded by literally an entire screen’s worth of the extraterrestrial threats. That’s really my one significant, serious complaint about EDF5 so far: the framerate is not yet stable. It really bogged down during the biggest, densest encounters. Hopefully it smooths out prior to release.Meanwhile, Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain (see video below) is out in the West in 2019 similar to EDF5 but does, in fact, take itself a bit more seriously. I played a mission with a don’t-call-it-Godzilla stomping its way through the city, and my weapons could barely even bother it, let alone destroy it. And on another mission, I was at one point literally surrounded by four giant mech-like robots (and for context, these robots were approximately a quarter of the size of the Godzilla-esque monstrosity) as well as hordes of giant cockroaches.Two-player local split-screen co-op, which I didn’t get to try, is a welcome on-paper feature of EDF5, as is four-player online co-op. Both EDF5 and Iron Force would be right at home in an ‘80s or ‘90s arcade. It’s mindless, dumb fun, and I had a smile on my face both during my hands-on session and afterwards. Next up, how about a VR version, developers?

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan , catch him on Unlocked , and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.