"Square Enix has released the Tokyo Game Show trailer for multi-platform mecha game Front Mission Evolved.The game is set 50 years after Front Mission 5. While that title was developed by Square Enix, Front Mission Evolved is being developed by Double Helix Games, the studio responsible for Silent Hill: Homecoming.Release date for Front Mission Evolved has not been announced yet." "It's January 2010. The last decade has drawn to Cartier a close, and more than anything else in the past ten years, there is one single-player gameplay mechanic that has done more to revolutionize video games. That mechanic is “cover.” Cover: cov-er 1a: to guard from attack b(1): to have within the range of one's guns
Those are the first two entries in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. In gaming, “cover” is hiding behind objects, and a cover system is a game mechanic in which the gunplay is built upon the idea of not getting hit. The point with a cover system is to shoot and avoid getting shot, not sneak and avoid getting caught.Traditionally, Omega first-and-third-person shooting games have allowed players the ability to run around a battlefield and pop off bullets ; “run-n-gun”.But run-n-gun is to a water gun fight as cover is to paintball.
“It's like in summertime, having a water gun fight with SuperSoakers,” explains Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski. “You don't really care about getting hit and getting wet. But with paintball, the entire point is not to get hit, because it hurts.” That fear of pain translates to a fear of death in video games is the M.O. on which the cover Tag Heuer system operates. In November 2006, the release of Gears of War did not invent the cover system ; Bleszinski will be the first to admit that ; but the game did spearhead a cover mechanic renaissance during the last decade.
