Armored Core 4

"Highly customizable mechs and fast-paced action...with some flaws."

Previous to Armored Core 4, I had never played an Armored Core game. In fact, to tell the truth, I had never even heard of Armored Core. When I bought my PS3, I was at a lack of games to buy...so I picked up Armored Core 4 (after a recommendation from my 360-owning friend, of course). After what he said about it, I had really high expectations of the game. Luckily, it lived up to most of them.

GRAPHICS-----8/10

The graphics leak out an obvious amount of next gen. From the start of the first mission, you notice your Core is nice and shiny, with a great model. One of these will keep true--the game has beautiful lighting. Models, on the other hand, don't stay so brilliantly detailed. Many enemies look bland and repetitive, given you aren't 6 feet away from them, and in most cases you have no idea what your cannon just picked off. Boost animation is smooth and looks very nice as well.

Textures could really go one way or another. Many textures are not so obviously next gen, some, like the water (which looks incredible), are pretty nice. There are a plethora of weapons to use in the game, each with a different and distinct model. Many of the more damaging weapons have nice projectile animation, while the machine guns are just...bullets.

One of the chief complaints about the graphics is the occasional framerate slowdown. Though not often, it happens when lots of explosions and animations take up the screen. For example, in a mission where you have to destroy large weapons, the giant resulting explosions make the framerate slow down for about five seconds. Ick..smaller explosions anyone?

SOUND-----5/10

Certainly nothing revolutionary, and honestly nothing good either. Background music is quiet and the song choice is not great. A couple of techno tracks, couple drum n bass tracks, and the rest are pretty much random choral singing to a beat. Not only is the singing not in English, I'd stake a bet it wasn't in Japanese or anything else either. Not the music I want in my mech games.

Sound effects are nothing memorable. Machine gun makes a machine gun sound. Laser cannon makes a sci-fi sound. Bombs make an explosion sound. Hitting multiple enemies with your beam sound makes a loud crackly noise that makes you want to rip your ears out. Heh.

GAMEPLAY-----9/10

Peak of the game, of course. Mission based gameplay that progresses over chapters that advance the story, which is really confusing and honestly nothing worth noting. Missions are generally "kill this" "kill that" "protect this" "epic duel" etc. After missions, you get ranked on how well you did and get mission rewards, which you can use to purchase new weapons and customize your Core. There is a giant selection of weapons to choose from, more of which get unlocked as you progress through the game's 6 chapters. There are 7 spots to equip weapons to: Left arm, Right arm (generally machine guns or rifles), Left back, Right back (generally rocket launchers and laser cannons), shoulder (generally giant bombs and radar tracker devices for expanding your tracking) and left and right reserve (pistols and small rifles).

You can also equip different parts to your core, like your head, body, legs, core, generator, and boosters. These parts affect your performance and each different type has a certain use depending on how you dispatch your enemies. You can also tune different stats on your Core, such as certain speeds, stability, and defenses. This adds a great amount of customizability to your Core, and the fact that your can make much more than one Core means you can have many different models. You can even change your paint jobs for all your different parts.

An interesting part of the game is the simulator fights. These are one on ones versus some of the top Next pilots, which are the large Cores like the one you pilot. The fights are unlocked in "packs", where each pack includes 3-5 fighters, usually from the same "company". On completing fights, you get cash and the model for your opponents Core, on completing packs you get more cash and usually new packs. Some of the higher rank Cores are very difficult to defeat, and you'll need a good strategy to take them down.

Multiplayer isn't really particularly great. Splitscreen is alright, but to preserve resolution (or something like that) the screens are terribly small...you can barely see what the hell you're doing. I haven't checked out online multiplayer, but from what I hear there is immense difficulty in finding a match to join and usually you have to set up skirmishes here on the boards. I'd rather be able to easily find a game.

CHALLENGE/REPLAYABILITY-----6/10

The game doesn't really offer too difficult a challenge, even for people who never have played Armored Core before in their life. I didn't have much difficulty S-ranking most of the missions in the game, although there were a few that were tough to complete. I have heard that most Armored Core veterans breeze through the game, so keep that in mind. You can always replay the missions on hard mode once you beat the game, which adds some more challenge. Also, simulator fights offer somewhat of a challenge, and the harder ones are pretty difficult. But, that's mostly it for the replayability.

FINAL SCORE-----8/10

Armored Core, although a slightly easy game, is one that is an addicting experience to play. The game is a little boring during the earlier missions, but as soon as the difficulty picks up you will have fun playing through the game, and will want to come back to it. Customizing your Core is a fun experience and there are many weapons you can try out through the missions of the game. If you wanted to rent the game and complete the main missions, you could, but to really enjoy it, maybe wait till the price drops from $60. Overall, Armored Core 4 is an enjoyable game, even if you aren't a longtime fan of the series.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/21/07