Front Mission: Evolved

Ah yes, Front Mission. I've known you for years - way back into the super Nintendo days - as one of the first cool turn-based robot games. Developing yourself over the years with more robo-variations, better storylines, fun characters, and of course better graphics.

In the particular case of FME, things take a strange twist (much like they did for Front Mission : Gunhazard), where the game is as a matter of fact NOT a turn-based RTS game. In this case, its a shooter type - technically a third person Over The Shoulder, but I still call it First person on accident more often then not. You know what though? Its still a pretty darn fun game. One word of warning though: I got nothing on multiplayer, as I haven't played it yet. So just a SP review for now.

Alright, so the nitty gritty. Graphically its modern - good looking. The environments in the single player are varied enough - cities, space, some indoor on-foot missions (yeah, they make you get out of the wanzer!), and even a return to the much renowned Huffman Island from the original FM game. There are some on-rail vehicle type stages as well, where you are placed on a dual-Gatling turret aboard an Osprey transport, gunning things down on your way to your landing zone, but all stages are experienced on mechanical foot at some point or another, even the arctic and desert levels.

The campaign's story is what you would expect from both FM and a square-enix title. What starts as a basic revenge part spirals up until it hits the point where its save the world save the girl. Honestly, it leads into the best line in the game (at least, my favourite) exchanged between the main villian and the main hero, and I'm goign to paraphrase it up a bit, you know, to save on forgetting names and what-not:
Hero:"Where's the girl?"
Villian: "The fate of the world is in the balance and all you can worry about is the girl?"
Hero:"I know where the world is, and it's not going anywhere, because I won't let you do anything to it OR the girl!"

Characterwise, the big show-stealer has always been the Wanzers - that is the giant piloted mech units. Customizable to an extent that makes it instantly familiar to the players of past FM games, one can swap out torso, leg, and both arms of their wanzer, then apply whatever 4 color patterns to the individual parts they want, including gloss levels and decals. Each part has different stats - armor, weight, skate speed (think rocket-boosted skating) for the legs, accuracy for the arms, and energy output for the torso. How it works ideally is that the energy rating of the torso can't be exceeded by the overall weight of the parts and weapons combined. This can be tweaked a little by equipping an energy producing backpack, or some quad-type legs (which are made for equipping more weaponry). Weapons themselves are FM classics - snipers, bazookas, missiles and rockets, robot sized 'brass' knuckles, bats and pneumatic pile-spikes, machine guns and shotguns. The names themselves will make a FM fanatic feel at home, being the same old names from back in the day.

From a gameplay standpoint, its nothing new. If anyone has played Armored Core before, they will catch on to the mech-based parts just fine - shoulders and bumpers assigned to weapons (arms and shoulder mounts), left stick click activates the 'skate', right stick the 'precision aim', and classic jump, dodge, and bullet time-esque 'E.D.G.E.' mode to the face buttons. When it comes to the non-mech section, it plays out like a typical shooter game.

Difficulty-wise, its not bad, although having played through on normal, the second to final boss proved quite problematic, taking about 10-12 attempts just to beat him, allowing me to continue with the rest of the mission and fight the final boss (who was a pushover compared to the other). The stage's are all pretty linear, which never bothered me since I get too easily distracted on a wide-open course. Overall, the game gives you enough of a challenge that it makes you wonder why it just ramped up so bad, but not undefeatable in difficulty.

The sounds are good, and I find the almost transformer-esque noises made quite amusing. I enjoy it, and maybe sometime I'll spend a little time with the multiplayer so I can share my thoughts on that. I mean, heck, its probably got less people playing that other games, but they cant possibly be as bad as the crowd that plays CoD, right?