Front Mission Evolved screenshots: actually good?

FME_Shield-Block

I'm not a marketing exec for one of the biggest games publishers on the globe. It's hard for my tiny mind to work out why you'd make a game where you command mechanical soldiers and shoot missiles out of your hands, and then call it "Front Mission Evolved." I can't answer that question, but I can tell you why you should care about... what was it called? I forget. Mission something. Anyway, MECHS.

Front: Mission Evolved

It's got the mandatory Square Enix plot - silly people doing melodramatic things with strained accents - but pulp is good, you know? Sometimes, you want your nemesis to have a big black scar over one eye, and a black goatee, and to be screaming "KILL ME!" with all of his many throats. It'll be big missions with lavish cutscenes - Squeenix, she love the cutscenes - but you'll spend the interstitial periods fighting giant "Wanzers" (walking tanks, pervert) with your own walking death machine.

It's set in a major city, with Wanzers trampling cars and, presumably, taking cover behind crate factories. There also appear to be some ground combat sections where you hop out of the mech and shoot assault rifles at zzzzz... but then you fight a mech on foot!

It'll also have the usual smattering of multiplayer arenas and team deathmatch modes. Square Enix may not be pumping out fiction that'll reduce you to tears or change your life, but this is worth keeping an eye on for the promise of piloting an agile, anime-style walking tank through a modern city in a big old mecha-war. I'm down.