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Preview of Front Mission Evolved - see full story
The Front Mission strategy series has been around for ages but has struggled to find an audience outside Japan. It has its cult following, but it's not one of Square Enix's most recognizable franchises beyond its homeland. The publisher/developer is hoping to change that with Front Mission Evolved, a new entry in the mech series that ditches the strategy in favor of third-person shooting. We've played through the Tokyo Game Show demo twice now and are impressed with most of it. Running around and blowing the crap out of things in your mech (or Wanzer, as they're called in the game) is great fun, but there are on-foot sections where you jump out of the machine and run around unshielded. So far, these sections are a bit of a mess.
Players will have a lot of freedom to customize and fine tune their mechs a la Armored Core. Purchasing new parts and building the perfect machine will be a big part of the final game, but for this demo there were three pre-made Wanzers to choose from. We went with the heavy assault unit, equipped with a shotgun and two rocket launchers. You can carry up to four weapons at once, which are handily mapped to the four buttons on top of your controller (triggers and bumpers on Xbox, R1-L2 on PS3).
The Front Mission strategy series has been around for ages but has struggled to find an audience outside Japan. It has its cult following, but it's not one of Square Enix's most recognizable franchises beyond its homeland. The publisher/developer is hoping to change that with Front Mission Evolved, a new entry in the mech series that ditches the strategy in favor of third-person shooting. We've played through the Tokyo Game Show demo twice now and are impressed with most of it. Running around and blowing the crap out of things in your mech (or Wanzer, as they're called in the game) is great fun, but there are on-foot sections where you jump out of the machine and run around unshielded. So far, these sections are a bit of a mess.
Players will have a lot of freedom to customize and fine tune their mechs a la Armored Core. Purchasing new parts and building the perfect machine will be a big part of the final game, but for this demo there were three pre-made Wanzers to choose from. We went with the heavy assault unit, equipped with a shotgun and two rocket launchers. You can carry up to four weapons at once, which are handily mapped to the four buttons on top of your controller (triggers and bumpers on Xbox, R1-L2 on PS3).