The new ‘mech’ style game, Front Mission Evolved; the Japanese based franchise has brought out a fresh approach. Moving from the single person strategy games, this is a faster third person shooter, hence the “evolved” in the title. This game from Double Helix studio is not the old ‘mech’ style game and you control the ‘Wanzers’ as you move about the game blowing up your opposition’s machines with a variety of weapons. With a five level single person campaign Front Mission Evolved also has multi-player and online matches that increase the playability of the game.
This new game starts in the year 2171 with our hero Dylan Ramsey off trying to save the world from evil in his Wanzer. These are Front Mission Evolved ‘mechs’ that are controlled from the inside by a human pilot. This game revives the factions from the previous Front Mission games with each faction controlling their army from their bases in space. These factions use their “orbital elevators” and are basically trying to destroy each other and control the world. Using the Wanzer and battling countless enemies young Dylan will have to face off against a boss at the end of each level. These bosses are difficult and frustrating, mainly since their machines do not overheat and seemingly take no damage other than the kill target. The enemies throughout Front Mission Evolved are quite easy to destroy, but use caution with your weapons overheating and have plenty of repair packs on hand. These boss fights require fleeing and repairing many times along with trying not to get trapped in a head to head slugfest.
The over all game play of Front Mission Evolved is rather average and at times can be frustrating. A feature that is always fun is the design of your Wanzer with the addition of new attachments or weapons. The features are fun and it is entertaining to smash your opponents with your ‘bare hands’, the damage to your machine is just not worth it. While entertaining the game offers no heads up about what sort of attachments you may need for your Wanzer. Attaching the wrong legs may slow you down or not allow you to carry the type of weapon you need. The missions can also be overly long with some boring side missions that seem like they were added just to add time. These are mainly boring straight up shoot them up collecting money for upgrades. The graphics looked very good on the Wanzer, but the environments and the useless ‘H.U.D.’ made Front Mission Evolved sort of bland.
In what seems to be a sad but growing trend, the better feature of Front Mission Evolved is the multi-player levels. This game offers four modes in the multi-player section: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Supremacy, and Domination. Getting away from the single person campaign mode, these allow you to fly your Wanzer around blasting your friends or whoever is playing online. The head to head missions have five different levels and become more entertaining than cycling through the same missions. The ‘Supremacy ‘mode allows you to battle other players to capture and defend a single point. In the ‘Domination’ mode the player tries to capture his opponent’s turrets. The players in the multi-player modes try to level up trying to reach a level 70. Like the single person version these level ups take an extremely long amount of time and after a while just get slightly monotonous. Over all Front Mission Evolved is a decent third person shooter that is fun but not something that will fulfill the ‘mech’ fans needs.