Front Mission Evolved Game Review
Review by Gamespot 5.5/10
Masking mediocrity by letting you blow up lots of stuff pretty much sums up Front Mission Evolved, a forgettable third-person shooter from Double Helix Games. The latest addition to the Front Mission family of tactical role-playing games may take this Japanese series in a new direction, but the old turn-based style of play has been replaced with an assembly-line shoot-’em-up that won’t win the franchise many new fans. While the action is sufficiently bombastic, with giant mechs, gun turrets, and tanks constantly going boom, it’s tough to get through the predictable, abbreviated campaign without snoozing. And the multiplayer is a bland assortment of games that will likely bore you long before you’ve explored it fully.
The story and setting are borrowed from the previous Front Mission games. The plot is a standard revenge saga featuring Dylan Ramsey, a civilian thrust into a war to find out what happened to his scientist father. It’s hard to get into the story or to want to find out the identity of the mystery man behind an insidious plan to start a global war, because your suspension of disbelief is derailed by cornball villains who do everything but add “Muahahaha!” to the end of their cheesy dialogue. The setting is at least somewhat intriguing. The timeline has been pushed forward into the later 22nd century, a leap forward from the earlier releases in the Front Mission franchise. Most of the big players remain the same, however, with the geopolitical landscape still dominated by feuding supernations. The world of 2171 actually looks a whole lot like our own, right down to the cars that people drive, but futuristic touches like space elevators make it clear that we’re a long way from 2010.
Review by IGN 6/10 (Passable)
I came into Front Mission Evolved knowing nothing about it. I hadn’t previewed it, I wasn’t up on the franchise to this point, and I honestly wasn’t even sure what type of game I was getting into. Now that I’m done with the title, I know plenty, but if you want me to boil it down for you right off the bat: Front Mission Evolved is just an uninspired game that’ll only appeal to the hardcore mech-heads out there.
It’s the year 2171 and the world’s broken up into warring factions that each have “orbital elevators” that allow military bases to exist in space. While the streets and cities look like they could be pulled from our own time, the technological advancements of more than 150 years seem to have gone into wanzers — mech’s humans climb into and pilot around like badass Transformers that don’t transform. You’ll step into the shoes of Dylan Ramsey and try to uncover the truth behind the world’s latest threat in this third-person adventure.
Review by shacknews 3.5/5
A series of games stretching back to 1995, when the first game released for Super Famicon in Japan, established Front Mission as an iconic strategy game franchise. In a style similar to Square’s role-playing games, they combined turn-based tactical combat with epic stories told through increasingly cinematic cutscenes as console technology advanced. Front Mission Evolved dispenses with the tactical combat part and instead of instead of watching the action in a movie has players piloting their giant walking mech–called wanzers–first-hand in a third-person action game.
This dramatic shift may draw the ire of many fans. Once past the initial shock, though, it’s hard to argue the appeal of playing with the wanzers that have looked so powerful in the cutscenes of the prior games. Even as a member of the group put-off by the change in style, I quickly warmed to Front Mission Evolved. From many hours spent with the prior games I had a pretty well-formed image in my mind of what a wanzer would be like. It would feel at once both massive and lithe, dashing around the battlefield equally adept at closing in to deliver a devastating punch with the robot equivalent of brass knuckles or sit back and unleash a barrage of missiles. Front Mission Evolved let me do exactly that
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