Armored Core 3

"AC3 further refines one of the best mecha combat franchises available."

From Software' approach to its long-running Armored Core franchise has always been conservative, to say the least. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because at its core - forgive the pun - Armored Core has always been a very solid game. Although there have been 5 sequels to the initial outing on the PSX, only two introduced new game engines and new parameters to the game. The other three were more expansions than sequels, simply adding new parts, new missions, and usually new arenas and opponents. AC3 is one of those sequels that truly qualifies as one, rather than just another expansion. It still does shares a whole lot in common with it's predecessors, though, and AC veterans shouldn't be surprised to find themselves experiencing deja vu more than once while playing.

The game's premise is pretty straightforward: In the future, all of mankind has been forced underground by a cataclysm that has made the surface uninhabitable. Society has come under the rule of the Controller, an artificial entity that micromanages society in the Layered down to the smallest of details. Several corporations have started to vie for power and the Controller's favor, and employ mercenaries known as Raven's to do most of their dirty work. Ravens pilot giant mecha known as Armored Cores, or ACs for short, and carry out missions for a fee or engage in battles with each other in the Arena to better their standing. It goes without saying that you're a new Raven with a barely adequate AC, and it's your job to take missions, shoot things, get money, buy bigger guns, and shoot more things. As simple as the premise is, the game's a lot of fun, and the missions are varied enough that they don't get stale. Fights in the Arena are simple one on one affairs, with the player selecting the location of the fight. Damage and ammunition costs aren't a factor in the Arena, so it's a good way to earn a few bucks in the beginning of the game. The Arena has always been my favorite part of the AC series ever since it's introduction, and I'm more glad than I can tell you that the developers at From Software decided to include it in the game after leaving it out of the last outing.

Along with AC3's new game engine came revamped graphics and new models. Although the graphical improvement is nowhere near as dramatic as the jump from the PlayStation games to the PS2 games, there are still some significant changes and improvements. All of the parts are reskinned, although many can still be recognized on first glance to veterans of previous games. The new models boast higher polygon counts, and the environments aren't quite as drab as ones from prior games. The general art design has been brightened up a bit, and the colors are more vibrant. The ACs themselves sport a lot of minute details, as cannon unfold as they are brought into firing mode and radars whirl to collect data during a firefight. The game's speed has been bumped up a bit from AC2, and the framerate is now consistent without any of the slowdown that plagued AC2.

Sound is above average. With one exception, the main themes are well done and fit the mood. They do suffer from quite a bit of repetition, however, as there is only a handful of them. The quality of the weapon sound effects varies, with a lot of weapons sounding muffled and tiny. Grenade launchers and howitzers sound appropriately thunderous, however. There's a lot of voice acting, consisting mostly of mission briefings. It's all pulled off without a hitch, though it's helped by the fact that no real acting is required for most of it.

The gameplay is usually the aspect of Armored Core games where people's opinions start to differ. If you've played any of the previous ones, well, it's the same thing here. Whether that's a good or a bad thing depends on whether or not you've become acclimated to AC's somewhat quirky control scheme. The game is played from a third-person perspective from behind your AC. Though there is a first person mode that can be unlocked if you have saved data from AC2, it's strictly a tacked on extra. The directional pad or the left analog stick moves you forward or backward and turns, while the top shoulder buttons control strafing and the bottom control looking up and down. The four face buttons control your AC's boosters, left arm weapon, right arm weapon, and toggling between right arm and back weapons. Vertical tracking is where gamers run into problems, as it's a bit counter-intuitive to be using the shoulder buttons to track a quickly moving target while strafing to dodge incoming shots. The slow moving targets in the missions are almost never a problem, with the exception of the occasional helicopter or jet, but you'll definitely have experienced some frustration with it by the time you've made it to the top of the arena. There's a fairly steep learning curve involved with that, but once you get used to the controls, they're tight and responsive. Multiplayer options include fights of up to 4 players, although that requires two copies of the game, an I-link cable, and another PS2. Two players can go at each other over an I-link or in a split screen mode, and the matches are set up the same way as matches in the arena. The co-op missions from AC2: Another Age have been axed, but they were never much more than a gimmick anyways.

Armored Core has always gone hand in hand with a massive amount of depth, and AC3 definitely follows in that vein. There are in the neighborhood of 200 parts for your AC. You can choose between different heads, cores, arms, legs, radiators, extensions, inside parts, targeting systems, engines, and arm and back weapons. New entries since AC2 include cores with detachable weapon pods and the ability to equip certain specialized weapons on the ACs left arm, whereas before there were only laser blades and energy shields available. The parts themselves generally don't differ much from parts seen in earlier AC games, with many seemingly ported directly over with only a skin job and minor stat tweaking. Some others are new, but still behave in a fashion very similar to older weapons. One of the nice things about AC3, though, is that since the parts have been balanced much more than previous attempts, weapons that were in earlier games but were totally ineffective are now worthwhile for the first time, and almost feel like new parts. As you can infer, AC3 does a much better job of balancing its parts than earlier attempts, and there are very few part categories where a single part is totally dominant over every other part in the category. Even weapons that initially seem hideously overpowering can be countered by a fairly decent pilot, and weapons that may seem ineffective can prove devastating when used in the right hands. Still, the balance isn't perfect; some weapons do make the game much easier than others, and there's definitely some encouragement to whore certain weapons. At least you won't be finding the same laser rifle on all of your friends' ACs, packaged on a nearly identical core with the same set of back-mounted multi-missiles.

AC3 wraps up in a very nice package. My friends and I were playing this game for months after the initial purchase, and it's still fun to go back to. There's a ton of depth, a tight control scheme once you get acclimated, and good graphics to boot. It doesn't stray too far from the path laid out by its predecessors, but that's about as much of a staple of the series as the ACs themselves. The game isn't without it's flaws, but I personally find this one of the most enjoyable games currently on the PlayStation2. If you're a fan of the series, AC3 should be a done deal. If you haven't liked earlier AC games, this one probably won't do much to change your mind. If you're new to the series and enormous, fully customizable mechanical gladiators blowing each other to slag sounds interesting, you're not going to find it executed much better anywhere else.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/16/03, Updated 02/16/03