Have you ever seen a movie adaptation of your favorite book, TV series, graphic novel, or other type of entertainment media that appears to be crappy at first due to its playing loose with the source material, and then later on you think back on it and it had some redeeming qualities after all? That maybe the movie (or other adaptation) would’ve been better overall if it didn’t attempt to associate itself with the source material? That’s the feeling I believe most fans of the Front Mission series will get when they play Front Mission Evolved – they would be kinder to the game if it didn’t have Front Mission stamped on the cover. Their ambivalence is understandable; Front Mission Evolved is, after all, an adaptation of sorts by American development studio Double Helix, an attempt to broaden the appeal of the Front Mission series by converting its genre from turn-based strategy to third-person action. Double Helix’s developers were probably sweating bullets when they were assigned the project, especially since their last attempt at adapting a beloved cult classic, Silent Hill: Homecoming didn’t fare so well in the eyes of fans. However, this reviewer can assure gamers two things about Front Mission Evolved that should put their minds somewhat at ease: first, that Front Mission Evolved, regardless of how faithful (or unfaithful) it is to the storyline of the Front Mission universe, is at the very least a solid, fun game, far better than Double Helix’s previous offerings; and second, it’s the best mecha combat game the Xbox 360 is going to see for a while, better than the most recent offerings of other mecha combat games such as Armored Core and Lost Planet.
Before I get to why Front Mission Evolved is great fun, let’s get one thing straight first – Front Mission Evolved is to the Front Mission series what Tom Clancy’s HAWX games are to flight simulators. In other words, the focus is more on balls-to-the-wall action and the simple pleasures of blowing stuff up than it is on staying faithful to its source material. That’s not to say Front Mission Evolved is a complete butchery of the Front Mission series; for one thing, the story takes place in the year 2171, far enough in the future that it doesn’t interfere with existing Front Mission canon story, and that some of the more outlandish things in Evolved’s story are more plausible simply by virtue of the fact that it’s farther in the future. And of course your giant mechs in question are still called wanzers (short for “Wander Panzer”). However, the overall complicated, more realistic politically driven plots of the previous games give way to a more straightforward, (over)dramatic story that’s more akin to the more extraordinary plotlines of mainstream mecha anime such as Gundam or Robotech, or even the more contrived, over-the-top moments of the Metal Gear games’ plotlines. Without spoiling the plot of Evolved’s story, let’s just say in the course of the game you’ll encounter such elements as wanzer zombies, mind control (and its associated overacting as the affected characters try to break free of it), and clandestine organizations bent on nothing more than world conquest through the creation of chaos (and their leader acts like a Joker-wannabe that’ll have Heath Ledger rolling in his grave).
Before you hardcore Front Mission fans go to Double Helix’s offices bearing torches and pitchforks, though, you should know that despite Double Helix’s deviations from established series conventions, the game is still damn fun to play. This is mainly due to the fact that the giant mecha combat genre is in general hard to screw up, but Double Helix does manage to get most things right that should be right in a mecha combat game. For one thing, the wanzers in Front Mission Evolved definitely get right the sense of scale and destruction that they are capable of. They are mainly slow and ponderous, and though they can skate around and be fast if they need to be, they can only do so in limited bursts. This mechanic provides a good compromise between slow and fast speeds that many mecha combat games can’t seem to get right (I’m looking at you, Armored Core 4); it really forces you to think fast when it comes to dodging incoming fire, as opposed to just being able to fly around all day. The firepower the wanzers can bring to bear also feels just right, being powerful enough that they can blow away just about any enemy they can come across, but yet not being so powerful that it seems unrealistic not being able to blow up buildings and the like. In-game you can stomp on obstacles as if you own the place and they summarily get destroyed, but most buildings and the like can’t be destroyed, which makes sense from a gameplay perspective; it means you can use buildings as cover.
That seems to be the basic theme for much of Front Mission Evolved’s gameplay – game mechanics that don’t necessarily make sense from a realistic or Front Mission canonical standpoint, but make actually playing the game more fun. One such mechanic is power-ups…I know what you’re thinking already, “power-ups, In a Front Mission game? How dare they!” But if you look at some mecha games in the past, certain mecha games have had a problem that they give you enough ammunition to get through most, but not all, of a mission, leaving you to fight the boss with just one clip of ammo, if that. Power-ups are one way to rectify that problem, giving you a way to regain a fighting chance against bosses after the rest of the mission depleted the rest of your ammo. There’s probably a more realistic, Front Mission fan-approved way of doing this but hey, in an action game you got to keep the focus on the action, so what do you want? This brings us to the boss battles, of which there are several, and while the power-ups in question here threaten to make the boss battles too easy, thankfully they do not, as the boss battles are varied enough to make getting to said power-ups, and of course fighting the actual bosses, a challenge each time. For instance, one boss battle has you fighting a pair of elite wanzer pilots, and with one directly engaging you and the other sniping you from afar, you can’t just sit on top of the power-up respawn point.
This feature review conludes on the next page, please click below to see our final thoughts on Front Mission Evolved.
