In multiplayer, you'll face off in four modes: deathmatch, team deathmatch, domination, and supremacy. That is, there's a multiplayer portion here that almost seems to be the game's focus so the single-player stuff is really just teaching you the differences when it comes to weapons, mech parts, and so on. Now, while I complained about the game forcing me into specific movement styles for the single-player campaign, it's almost forgivable if you look at Front Mission Evolved as a multiplayer game.

The characters don't look that great, but the wanzers themselves stand out as they fight in the drab environments. The voice acting's stiff as well as repetitive. The story is told in five acts that shouldn't take you too long to play through, although I did get stuck at some obnoxious boss fights here and there. You run around, collect money you can use to upgrade the wanzer, and kill bad guys that don't put up much of a fight. You have two weapons, there's no cover system other than crouching behind stuff, and your health regenerates. On the other hand, there are levels where you're running around sans-mech, and these play out like a sub par third-person shooter.

There are boosters so that I could shoot around levels, but the wanzer was so clunky I found myself getting caught on corners of the environment and feeling less than awesome.

Another made me use spider-legs for some unknown reason, and this meant that I was very slow and always open for attack. One demanded that I use these legs that could glide over water, but doing so meant I could only carry one weapon into a tough mission. I dig this experimentation and customization, but lots of missions seem to shoehorn you into annoying loadouts. Everything has a weight to it, so you need to balance your loadout and make sure you're well-armed and still functional. Before every mission, you get to customize your wanzer. I just ran around blasting bad guys and hiding behind buildings to survive. This stuff can be fun, but most of the time it was frustrating filler. You'll be unleashed on a mission, blast a bunch of bad guys with your rockets, and eventually face off against a boss in a powered-up suit. The majority of gameplay is wanzer-based combat. Play This story shakes out in a few different ways.

Front mission evolved sensor locations