Oh god, do I love my giant robots. Streams of automatic fire bouncing off their ridiculous amount of armor, crumpled vehicle frames getting stuck on the undersides of their massive feet, and neato cool designs that range from “I’m going to pepper you with artillery and missile fire” to “I’m going to pepper you with machinegun and laser fire”. Some of the finest giant robot action I’ve ever seen has ranged from games in the Mechwarrior series to Steel Battalion (and who could forget Earthsiege), but one little standout game series is “Front Mission”, a cool little shindig from our friends at Squaresoft. While admittedly I’ve never played any of the Front Mission games aside from number three (which was long as hell and had craploads of content), this series has repeatedly piqued my interest with promises of hardcore mech-on-mech action on a turn-based strategic level the likes of which have been rarely seen before. Square Enix recently put out the call for players to sign up for a free demo disc of the upcoming U.S. release of Front Mission 4 (a sign-up sheet which may very well still be available here ), and after hopping on this generous offer, my demo disc finally arrived. My impressions? Excuse me, I need to clean up the drool around my desk first.

Front Mission 4’s storyline is a little complex, very political, and very much not revealed in the demo to any significant extent, but after digging around, I found a few nuggets. Basically, the game takes place in a timeframe prior to Front Mission 3, where the European Community (E.C.) is setting up a research group to develop new types of Wanzers (“Wanzers” are the FM series’ quirky designation for the giant robots the gameplay revolves around). The group, dubbed “Durandal”, has just picked up a new recruit from the French army named Elsa – which is where the game opens up. More details won’t be forthcoming until the final game is released this June, but an unknown elite enemy force assaults and annihilates a German base (as seen in the excellent action-packed opening movie) shortly after Elsa hooks up with Durandal, causing them to set off on a quest to try and figure out who the mystery attackers are and how they can be stopped.

The demo itself only includes six levels (seven, if you count the menacing “secret” one accessible by beating all six demo missions, going back to the mission select screen, and pushing up once on the d-pad – yay for hidden content!), but they all give quite a fascinating insight on how the game plays out. There are also nearly a dozen tutorials available to cover all manner of different aspects of the game, which will assist newcomers and Front Mission veterans alike in becoming acquainted with new elements. Gameplay is actually overall very similar to Front Mission 3, except the strong impression I got is that they took all of the previous aspects that made the game good and effectively improved upon them (sadly, I saw no sign of the “virtual internet” feature). In between cutscenes and dialogue segments that flesh out the storyline, actual gameplay takes place on the battlefield in a turn-based environment. Pretty simple – the player takes his turn to move his units or attack the enemy, then when all of his units have performed an action, the turn changes to the enemy side, which does the same. Actions available will vary based on what kind of equipment a given Wanzer has and what kind of capabilities its pilot has. Simple enough, though the gameplay itself can get very hairy and very complex, especially with the new features that FM4 has tossed into the fray.

One of the most stand-out functions is the ability to “link” different Wanzers together. Doing this causes units to give fire support to one another every time an attack command is issued. Why is this handy? Because as I said, each unit may perform only one action per turn, but a linked Wanzer can override this. For example, if I take a melee-equipped Wanzer, run him up to an enemy, and punch him in the groin once, that counts as a move. However, if that Wanzer is linked to a second nearby Wanzer, then when I move it into position to attack, the first melee Wanzer will also be allowed to make an attack again simultaneously, provided he had any Action Points remaining. These “support” melee attacks would continue over and over again every time I had another Wanzer issuing an attack order until either my turn ended or the melee Wanzer ran out of APs. While the demo didn’t show how these links could be set up (they were all pre-assigned and only available in some missions in the demo), I’m assuming they’re configured during some manner of pre-mission dialogue – or I’m just dense and missed something obvious. The system was definitely cool to see in action though, and it allowed for some awesome and devastating attacks that could annihilate enemy Wanzers with only a single command issued. Just watch out, some enemy Wanzers have the ability to link as well.

New equipment is another thing Front Mission 4 features in spades. While there’s still the standard variety of machineguns, shotguns, missile launchers, and melee weapons (as well as the legs, arms, and torsos that allow you to piece together Wanzers in a manner similar to Armored Core – the demo showed this off to a small extent), a new collection of backpacks allow Wanzers to be split up into all manner of different classes. No longer are they used for storing basic items or augmenting a Wanzer’s attack ability, but now they can be used to unlock entirely new functionality. EMP backpacks allow a special attack that has a chance to disable key parts of an enemy Wanzer until repaired (such as preventing it from attacking or moving), though these attacks can have a high failure rate depending on certain battlefield conditions. Repair backpacks are incredibly heavy to mount, but effectively turn the equipping unit into a medic that can repair friendly Wanzers, or even restore destroyed components (like arms or legs), complete with their attached weapons. Even jetpacks are available to allow Wanzers to leap onto buildings and other obstacles and gain a huge defensive advantage from the altitude bonus. Alas, I was a little vague on the exact function of the new “Sensor” backpack, but was told it apparently increases the range on friendly nearby missile launchers, which can be handy in larger missions.

And yes, large-scale missions are now going to be more intense than ever, thanks to the inclusion of limited ammo as a new gameplay variable. Machineguns and shotguns will typically have large amounts of ammunition (one hundred attacks on average – ammo is tracked on a “per attack” basis, rather than per-projectile), but specialized weapons such as long-range rifles have a much more severe limitation. Exact ammo limits tend to vary based on the weapon being used (some rifles or missile launchers will have more ammo available than others), but once a weapon is dry, the unit in question is essentially helpless. Fortunately, ammunition kits can be carried in certain backpacks to allow friendly units to rearm themselves in a limited manner. The game’s tutorial also made mention of “ammo bunkers” that will restock a unit’s ammo if its turn ends with the Wanzer parked right next to it, but I never encountered these during actual gameplay. My personal opinion is that the limited ammo thing makes the action all the more intense and forces players to select their equipment and tactics far more carefully, though it remains to be seen on how severely this will impact gameplay. I definitely had a big ammo problem in the seventh “secret” demo mission though, so don’t entirely discount the idea of loading at least one character out with necessary ammo packs, just in case.

Action points now also carry a bigger focus, thanks to the addition of “double attacks”. Basically, each attack costs a certain number of APs based on the weapon type. But if a pilot has double the AP cost available, he’ll be allowed to execute two attacks instead of one, increasing the damage delivered. This can sometimes be annoying if a Wanzer eats up all of its APs in a linked double-attack before you ever have a chance to give it a different order (thankfully, you can issue commands to Wanzers in any order you desire). Pilot skills are another thing briefly shown off in the demo, though disappointingly they are carried out in the exact same manner that they were in Front Mission 3 (totally random activation, adjusted by a couple of variables). Skills primarily came into effect during combat segments (with neato abilities, like a “double-strike” attack that would fire both of a Wanzer’s weapons at once, if it was carrying two), but there were a few passive skills also available that improved functionality, such as that of the Repair command. I have to say that I’d have appreciated a little more control over how skills were used, as the totally random level of activation makes them unpredictable and difficult to rely upon. We’ll have to see how it all works out in final.

For long-time fans of Front Mission 3, a collective satisfactory sigh will most likely be heard at seeing Front Mission 4’s graphical engine in motion. The animations are completely fluid and awesome to see in action, and the transition from the turn-based engine to the action-segments when an attack command issued is now much smoother, since it appears that crude sprites are no longer being used to represent Wanzers and other targets on the battlefield. Unfortunately, in comparison to other modern PS2 titles, the FM4 demo appeared to suffer a little in terms of overall graphical quality. Some low-res close-up textures and heavy aliasing were present, and the explosions sometimes looked a little low-grade. That said, the graphics could easily have been a lot worse, and the quality of the Wanzer animations (especially compared to FM3) more than make up for any potential downsides. I was also glad to witness some fairly quick load times, and look forward to seeing what other graphical tricks the developers have thrown into the game once the final is released.

FM4’s audio experience is something else entirely, with some delightful special effects that made watching my Wanzers duke it out an experience I never got tired of. Hearing a machinegun discharge into someone’s face, or a pilebunker attack take off a poor bastard’s arm was simply beautiful. Wanzers make all of the little hydraulic whines and clanks you’d expect out of giant robots, and the excellent ambient music tracks topped everything off to ensure that FM4 is as great a game to listen to as it is to play. There’s also a lot of voice acting thrown into the fray (finally), though I can already see a lot of conflicting opinions appearing on the quality of it. Frankly, I thought the voice acting was pretty decently done considering the gamut of foreign characters that make an appearance in the demo, though a couple of the accents felt a little over-exaggerated. Hearing voices always gives me a much tighter connection to the characters I’m working with than simply reading text though, so I have to say that seeing active dialogue in FM4 was a big relief. Oh, and the corny scripts from Front Mission 3 appear to have been abolished, so I believe a much better storyline will be presented this time around.