At a glance...

Front Mission: Evolved review

There are only a handful of mech games that have made their way on to Western consoles, aside from the popular MechWarrior series and a number of others, these games have been relegated to niche status and whilst they have their fans, they haven't made a large enough splash outside of the Eastern markets. Today we take a look at Front Mission: Evolved, the latest entry in the Front Mission series, and a series that I hadn’t even heard of before getting my hands on a review copy of this game.

Front Mission: Evolved kicks off with an exciting CGI intro detailing the world that you are about to enter and the conflict that's about to begin. In this universe, future warfare has evolved since the introduction of Wanzers, Front Mission's name for a mech, and most of the military powers control their own army of them. A number of these factions have also taken to space and are in control of space elevators that control the links between earth and orbital platforms. The game itself focuses on a central character, Dylan, whilst a non-playable character narrates in the cut-scenes between the game's acts, giving you a pulled back perspective of the war you’re caught up in. This quickly becomes very convoluted and before long you're stuck with a bunch of confusing TLA’s (Three Letter Acronyms) such as the ICU, DHZ and the UCS. It often becomes a confusing mess trying to figure out which side you’re on and whether the group that the narrator is currently talking about are the good guys or the bad guys. There are a number of side characters such as your work colleague Amy and in typically Eastern fashion, your mech happens to have an on-board computer system named Wizard.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first sat down to play Front Mission: Evolved. The mech genre has always been a mystery to me, my last journey into the genre being MechWarrior 2 in 1995. Therefore sitting down to play the game for the first time I was in for a pleasant surprise. Treating the game like a third person shooter, I quickly became engrossed in the gameplay. The Wanzer you control is equivalent to a person, sporting arms and carrying a rather large submachine gun. If you took scale into account then you’d realise that the gun is about the size of a car but I thought it would be better not to get caught up in such technicalities. The downside to being a mech, however, is that you're incredibly slow, laboriously stomping your way through the environment. Luckily, you are initially equipped with an agility pack which allows you to convert the power you generate into a speed boost. This manifests itself into a set of skates that allow you quickly speed about the world. The mech handles as though you were controller a pro skater, as you simply glide across the tarmac roads. In addition, you also have the ability to jump using two jets attached at the back. If you happen to have the agility pack you can also hover in place for a few moments. As we've already mentioned, these abilities rely on energy your Wanzer generates and unfortunately, it doesn’t last that long meaning there are times when you have to slow down to a crawl while waiting for the meter to recharge.

This isn't a game of exploration; after the initial attack in the opening sequence, a quick series of events finds you and your Wanzer getting drafted into the military. As a result, this means that the biggest bulk of the game will be taken up by combat with other Wanzers. Combat is a mixed bag; I found myself taking a number of shots at the enemy before hiding away waiting for my health to recharge. The enemies you have are usually extremely agile themselves and aside from the odd exception will usually bring the fight to you. The game does a bad job of explaining that your health replenishes and so I thought that once my health was too low I was doomed. Your missile launcher has the ability to lock onto enemies and fire a barrage of missiles at them, something that I found myself using a lot. The machine gun has an aiming reticule and allows for certain parts of the mechs to be targeted, resulting in slower movement, reduced attack or other similar effects. However, I didn’t find this particularly useful, opting instead to fire at the centre-mass in order to achieve a quick take down. In addition to your machine gun and rocket (both of which you get to customise), you also have a melee attack. I usually found this wasn’t worth the hassle of charging up to enemy mechs and again, blasting away from afar was a much more efficient (and safer) option.

After the first few missions, you get the option to customise your Wanzer, adding various upgrades as you see fit. This allows you to change the weapons on your Wanzer, adding rockets or improving the power of your existing weapons. You also get battle skills that grant you certain rewards when you achieve specific goals such as Critical Blow or Shrapnel Shot. Finally you get to change the look of your Wanzer by using the Visual category. The one thing you need to bear in mind is that certain parts use up power generated by the mech meaning that you can’t just give yourself all the best items if you don’t have the power generation to match. This leads to a fine balancing act, matching the power of your chosen items with power capabilities of your setup as well as the weights of each component. This system is paid for by money that you earn by destroying enemy Wanzers or picking up crates during the levels. Unlike upgrade systems in other games, you’re not tied down a particular upgrade path when you spend money as you can easily back out of your configuration and choose something else, getting back all the money you’ve invested on the upgrades. For those not interested in this system, you can simply choose to use on the pre-built configurations, something I urge you to use as I found myself having a pretty tough time of the mid-game levels as I had completely ignored the upgrade system by mistake.

In addition to the mech assaults which make up the majority of the missions, there are a number of sections that deviate from this formula in order to keep things interesting. Early on, a timed race sequence requires you to race through the city as it collapses, skating all the way, picking up containers of energy as you go. Other sequences find your Wanzer strapped to a helicopter, resulting in an on-rails sequence as you clear out a landing zone. You even get to ditch the mech, for some on-foot assaults in order to rescue some of your captured people. Each of the game’s five acts also features a boss fight at the end, adding some tension to the campaign.

I mentioned earlier on in this review that I initially treated the game as a third-person shooter and because of this I noticed a number of flaws that eventually detracted from my enjoyment of the game. Despite appearing to be a third person action game it uses none of the additions that the genre has developed and there are also a number of poor design decisions. For a start, there’s no cover system, meaning that you have to expose your mech in order to attack anyone. I’d accept this as the mech isn’t really designed to stick to a wall but this is also lacking in the segments when you're out of your Wanzer. Additionally, your teammates, both inside and out of mechs, do little to help you take down your opponents. For all the emphasis it places on having a team at your side, it very much feels like a solo enterprise and you end up taking down most of the Wanzers yourself. The boss fights add a little variety to the game as well as some needed tension, but ultimately results in lengthy sections where you wear down the boss’s health in a tiny arena. I died numerous times early on in the game and only in the death menu after the twentieth time did I notice the option to re-customise your mech, something that isn’t available normally. It was then I discovered that I hadn’t upgraded my mech at all, but the game gave me no indication to this fact.

Unfortunately, these design choices left me with a sour taste in my mouth, which surprised me after having such an enjoyable reaction to the early missions in the game. Front Mission: Evolved is an interesting game and those who have already played the previous games in the series will no doubt love the continuation of the franchise. For a new player such as myself, entering this series for the first time, FM: Evolved did little to keep me interested and ultimately means I will not be back for future entries.

Ratings

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