Left Alive

Rumours of Front Mission's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

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The Front Mission series is 11 games old, and in the 23-plus years since its inception it has sold millions across Japan. Yet in the west, it remains an unknown quantity; only two games in the series have ever been localised on these shores. That’s a big part of the reason for its latest instalment bearing no mention of the series. But Left Alive is also a very different kind of game.

Front Mission is a matter of tactics and strategy, of armies of giant robots facing off against each other. Left Alive, however, is a third person shooter in which the Wanzers, as Front Mission styles them (short for the German word ‘wanderpanzer’, or ‘walking tank’), belong to the enemy, and the enemy alone. The game is set in the early days of a war, the protagonist one of few survivors in a suddenly war-torn city. Thus the stage is set not only for a thirdperson shooter, but one in which the sort of mech-on-mech combat on which this series made its name arrives only rarely, and in which avoiding conflict is often better than engaging in it.

“Of course, we do have scenes in the game where you ride these giant robots and fight with them,” game director