When it comes to bad movies, we've all seen our fair share. Yet a terrible flick isn't always just written off as a terrible flick; they can, given the right celestial confluence of events, end up labelled a B-movie or even a ‘cult' classic. Indeed, some filmmakers even set out to emulate this style of cinema or are happy to invite such comparisons, because in an industry as big as Hollywood, not everything has to be a top-grossing blockbuster to be considered a success. Yet for some reason, when it comes to gaming, there doesn't seem to be the same sort of second chance available: a bad game is, usually, just a bad game. Until now.

Earth Defence Force 2017 can only be described as a B-game, and while it's probably a little too early to call it, there's a very real chance it may end up considered a cult classic by the small band of die-hards who love the game for what it is. What's more, it's clear that the developers at Sandlot were heavily influenced by B-grade cinema from the last half century, and coupled with the fact that D3, a Japanese budget-series publisher, has picked up the game, you have a sure-fire recipe for B-level brilliance.

Earth Defence Force 2017 is, as is so often the case, actually the third game in the series known as Chikyû Boueigun in Japan, but it is the first time the series graces the Xbox. The storyline is wonderfully simple: an aggressive extraterrestrial threat has descended on Earth and is busy releasing a killer combination of giant insects and giant robots to dispatch humanity post-haste. With the planet's air-force wiped out in a matter of minutes like the pansies they are, it's up to the ground infantry of the Earth Defence Force – specifically you and a handful of idiotic A.I. squad-mates – to save the planet from total annihilation. That sound you heard was the collective sigh of contentment from everyone who finds such a clear cut plot as refreshing as an icy cold beer!

If you thought the stellar storyline was simple, then the actual gameplay should be right about on par with your expectations. This is mindless, bog-standard run-and-gun action at its most primal. The action is controlled via the third-person, with you controlling your anonymous soldier, aiming at pretty much anything you please, and holding down the trigger until the level is over. Then, there's 52 more levels to slog your way through, and that's just on the first difficulty level – there's another 4 of those too once you're ready, making for 265 missions if you want to entirely beat the game and earn the few Achievements on offer. There's one Achievement for each difficulty level completed, as well as one for unlocking every weapon in the game, and while it sounds simple enough on paper, unlocking the big-points here is far from an easy task.

Each mission represents about 5 minutes to half an hour of play time, which is a pretty hefty commitment for those of you who want to get the most out of the game. And this isn't just about Achievements either: much like your average MMORPG, the good gear doesn't even appear until you're dancing with the big boys. Beating the game on Easy, Normal or Hard will certainly yield a nice cache of weaponry, but to access the truly awesome arsenal, you need to battle through Hardest or Inferno difficulty, and this is anything but a walk in the park. The missions don't change at all, but every enemy becomes more deadly, better armoured, and in the levels where there are enemy generators like hive-points, they will spawn quicker and get out of control a lot faster.

Luckily there are a few things you can do to even the odds. Whenever you kill an alien invader, there is a chance they will drop a power-up of some kind, lovingly rendered in stunning 2D for added hilarity. If they do, it will be randomly selected from a small pool of goodies, which includes: minor or major health replenishment, an armour increase or a weapon unlock. The latter two aren't added to your inventory unless you successfully complete the mission, so if you cark it, then you'll miss out.

The armour increase will raise your soldier's health by one – you start at a150 and it climbs ever upward from there. This of course allows you to take more punishment in subsequent missions, but it actually has nothing to do with armour per se and will not reduce the damage you take. The weapon unlocks are what you really want though, and for each one you collect you will be randomly given a death-dealing device, many of which you will already have, but sometimes it will be something new and exciting. There's a bunch of categories too, including assault rifles, shotguns, missiles, grenades and special weapons, which includes things like turret emplacements and flamethrowers and such. The catch here is that you can only take two weapons into battle with you, so picking the right tool for the job is half the challenge.

While the assault rifle is probably the most versatile and consistently useful weapon, nine times out of ten you're going to want to take the most powerful explosive ordnance with you that you can to make use of Earth Defence Force 2017's fantastically destructible environments. That's right, people, the biggest threat to our planet's safety isn't really the invading alien hordes; it's one guy with a grenade launcher and the inclination to fire it at buildings! Pretty much every bit of scenery in the game can be destroyed, and even a single weak explosive can bring down an entire building. Once you get some of the more powerful weapons from Hard difficulty or above, it isn't unusual to see the whole city block crumble under one single rocket or grenade attack. Not only that, but the developers turned friendly-fire on, so your band of merry men can easily be massacred by your errant spray'n'pray technique!

This insane level of brutal bedlam only further serves to enhance the ridiculously camp sci-fi nature of the game. As buildings fall and trees and cars go flying, it's impossible not to think of Godzilla and all the other B-grade creature features of the mid 20th Century, especially when said buildings have swarms of giant ants crawling all over them. And when we say giant, we don't just mean man-sized, we mean ants and spiders the size of small houses, and when we say swarms, we don't just mean a handful, we mean literally dozens of enemies at a time. Glancing up to the top right of your screen, a sea of angry red blips on the radar crashing towards you like a tsunami is pretty much a standard day in the office for an EDF soldier.

The fact that you're outnumbered isn't really a big deal, except that this is where Earth Defence Force 2017's shortcomings do start to become apparent. For example, enemy corpses tend to persist for a short while, and while dead ants the size of your average SUV is pretty funny, the still-warm cadavers can quickly block your movement. This is particularly problematic in the tunnel missions, where body-block can rapidly have you trapped and unable to fire any of your more powerful weapons. The controls don't help either, and whoever decided that jump and dodge should be mapped to the same button needs to be shot, particularly since there's plenty of other free buttons they could have used.

But really, these are fairly minor quibbles, easily lost in the bombastic B-Grade business of bug busting. The dialogue is horrible; the voice acting worse, and your brain will probably suffer a Repetitive Strain Injury if you play it for more than an hour – but this is all part of Earth Defence Force 2017's charm. The inclusion of two-player co-op should allay many of the game's woes, and even when it doesn't, blowing your friend up with an ill-timed rocket or badly thrown grenade makes it all worthwhile. Adversarial multiplayer is an absolute waste of time as an inclusion since it is only for two players, and the lack of Xbox Live support undermines both modes anyway. But if you like your games with an extra helping of cheese, then Earth Defence Force 2017 could be right up your alley.