Fox's Review: Armored Core 4 (360)

[Fusion]

Being naturally of the sketchy quality of the series as of late, when I first saw Armored Core 4 and heard it changed the classic formula a bit, I was naturally concerned that once again things that didn't need to be tweaked were being messed with when it came to classic games.  But, to me, it seems those tweaks are both good and bad, they'd probably throw the Armored Core vet off a bit, given the radically different play style.  But I'll just rate it for what it is.


(Graphics: 8/10)

While the 360 itself alone has the graphical power that makes the Wii look last-gen, that's not what I'm poking at here.  For Armored Core, the graphics are impressively well done.  Unlike previous titles, nothing seems horrendously slow, the game's graphics are enough to both show you what's going on at a good frame rate.  Unlike most 360 titles, which only churn out 30 frames per second (not a very good way to show off, to me), Armored Core typically runs at 60 frames per second, barring any massive explosions.  Everything is visible, in the distance enemies will not be able to be seen clearly.  There's even a mini-display that shows if you auto-center your target.  Sadly, when the action gets crazy-intense, the game's frame rate suffers a bit, but the game keeps it's pace.  A forgivable issue.


(Sound: 9/10)

Where the mediocre techno themes of the previous games are, they swap them out with music that actually sounds like music, that helps fill the void that would otherwise be complete silence.  Your Next's walking sounds actually sound like they should: Like there's a train wreck every step.  It helps carry the feel that you're in a giant mech.  The weapons you fire actually have sounds that stand out from one another.  Lock-ons, the interface, all of that and more is basically just new.  It's weird because for every Armored Core "Generation" they seem to use the same sound effects until the next "Generation" appears, and I for one am glad to not hear those Armored Core 3 sounds yet -again-.  But I will admit that the coolest and most fitting sound effect ever is the Overboost sound effect.


(Gameplay: 9/10)

Like I said, I was originally skeptical of the game at first.  Having heard so much about Quick-Boost abuse.  While I'll agree that it's kind of a cheap (but effective) way to fight, It's nowhere near the level of 'broken'.  An upgrade from previous games is that you can use two weapons at the same time without having to switch between single weapons.  It makes combat a heck of a lot faster, because you can be firing a gatling gun at your opponent and at the same time, unleashing missiles at his Next.  It makes the combat parts a lot more exciting, but also a lot more challenging.

Instead of the AP maxing out at 9999, the AP has had another digit added, and now you can have AP as high as 54335.  Of course, weapons do a lot more damage as well so it balances out.  There's also been a tweak to the energy system: You no longer have a red zone nor are you forced to wait for the energy to recharge should you drain your supply.  However your Overboost, as a result, is now limited to a secondary gauge that's a shield of sorts.  When you Overboost, you drain that shield.  When you get hit, you drain that shield.

Armored Core veterans may be thrown off by the drastically changed interface, which relies on schematics.  What this really is, however, is a far easier way to have multiple kinds of setups and builds.  It'd be impossible to mistake one setup for another.  What's even better is that you don't have to own the parts in single-player to use the schematics you make in multiplayer.  This means I can create a walking machine of death and be able to use it in MP at any time, though sadly in SP I won't get that kind of awesome.

There's also the usual ability to color your Next, as standard with any Armored Core game, only this time around you can color the arms individually and color the weapons indivudually.  You're also able to place emblems wherever you like ala F-Zero GX.  A welcome feature, expands the designability even more.  Now the only thing I wish we could do was download emblems we could make on our PC and slap those on our AC.

The difficulty in this game only depends on your piloting skill, if you pilot worse than that penguin from The Critic, you're surely going to be destroyed within seconds, but if you know how to quick-boost your way around, you're far more likely to succeed in your mission as well as maybe win a few online matches.

And to finally elaborate on Quick-boost.  Quick-boost is a new feature to the Armored Core series where when executred, your booster just fires itself for a short but powerful moment.  You can use this mid-boost to give you a little jump in speed, break the sound barrier while overboosting, or just dodge stuff.  It comes in really handy for the blade Next users, who've been screwed over by the series' gameplay until now.

And still rambling on about the features, the typical Arena feature has been replaced with a  Simulator where you can actually get paid to defeat computer simulations of famous characters in Armored Core 4.  As I said earlier, you can actually use unbuilt ACs as your mech and wipe them all over the map.

The only thing that's bad is that the designers ran out of ideas for the multiplayer maps, because every single one of them sucks like hell and there's no standardized arena map.  Multiplayer feels like a key element here, given that you play against real players, and it would be good to have maps that encourage combat, even though the maps provided just seem like they were put together at the last minute.  Don't get me wrong, it's not like they're out of place or anything it's that the design is ridiculously boring.

(Overall 9/10):

A complete turn from what I expected, I can safely say Armored Core 4 is worth it if you're an Armored Core fan, or a mech fan in general.  The graphics in this game run smoothly and gracefully for the most part.  This game has just enough gameplay to match the graphics, and that's what makes me happy.  That and there's X-Box Live support, so online multiplayer is a real thing and even though you don't really need anybody to play against, it's better if you play against friends.  For me, I'll just stick to the AC Garage Forums and pick fights from there.

And no, you may not have my Gamertag.