Armored Core 4 – 360 – Review

The Armored Core series has an
extremely faithful following due to its extremely in-depth customization of the
Mechs that you pilot. Even though the newest game is entitled Armored Core 4,
there have been many games over the past several years or so that carry the
Armored Core brand name. This game is the first one that is on the “next
generation” consoles, and the question is how does it stack up?

The Armored Core series is not known
for its story mode in any way, shape, or form. All you need to know is that the
there are many battles going on around the world. You are hired by a mercenary
group to help eliminate the faction that is causing such an uproar and basically
to save humanity. That is about as deep as the story for this game goes. After
you get this briefing in the beginning of the game you are taken to a really
nice and easy-to-learn tutorial mode that will show you how to do just about
everything that you need to do in the game to win and survive.

The game flow is pretty simple as
well. Once you finish the tutorial you will go into the chapter screen which
will show the various missions you can go to. You will then go through each
mission beating it to the best of your ability, meaning less time, not using
much ammo, and not taking much damage. Depending on how you did you will get a
reward that can be spent on repairing and upgrading your Mech. The problem with
this is that many missions are trial and error because you never know what type
of weapons are needed until you are actually in a mission, so it is not uncommon
to do many of the games missions, which can get really annoying at times.

There are more than 30 missions in
this game, and to be honest it only feels like only a few. The main reason for
that is that many of the missions are identical to some that you did earlier in
the game. Which brings me to a huge irritation: various missions will have you
protecting something from hordes of incoming enemies. It is really hard to stop
them all since you will have to continuously going forward and back to shoot
them all down. This is made even more difficult since you “battle area” is so
small, which makes it near to impossible to shoot all of the enemies down. Why
did the developer’s give you such a small area to take everything down is beyond
me, but it will get on your nerves.

This game also offers a really
shallow multiplayer gameplay. You can play either system link, split screen, or
online. All of them don’t offer a variety of different ways to play other then
may the best person win. This is really shallow and I was hoping that this game
would offer some more in-depth multiplayer to match up with the depth of the
robot customization. It is really interesting to go online to see the other
creations that people make, but other then that this game will not keep you
coming back for more unless you are a die hard fan of this franchise.

When a new generation of consoles
hits, it is always a “break” for the developers until a game comes along and set
the benchmark. Well, in this post-Gears of Wars gaming era, graphics have been
taken up a notch, and anything that doesn’t compare is usually “ragged” upon.
Armor Core 4 is such a game, it is a decent looking game, but now gamers expect
much more from games. The problem with this game is that all of the environments
are particularly bland and plain looking, and to make matters worse the draw-in
distance is very short.

On the flip side of things is that
when you are customizing your Mech you will be able to see all of the new
changes automatically. This includes when you exchange and put new weapons and
even changing the various physically parts and color scheme it. This is really
fun to see what the other players around the world are creating and see if they
look like anything that you might have seen in Transformers, Gundam, and any
other Mech oriented show. This is this series bread and butter, being able to
change almost anything you want about your Mech as long as you have enough money
to do so.

The audio for this game is better
than in previous games, but it really isn’t spectacular. The music will help
guide you when you are in more intense battles, but it doesn’t move you or give
you the sense of urgency like it should. The sound effects are also decently
done, from all of the gun fire, explosions, and other things you will hear while
in a war zone. The voice acting for this game is also decent, but it will get
annoying to hear the mission briefings multiple times because you died.

Armored Core 4 is rated teen and
contains fantasy violence and mild suggestive themes.