Pax Economica. You’re not fooling anyone, Armored Core 4, with your fancy Latin, Times New Roman usage, and weird yet soothing narrations. You aren’t nearly as interesting as you purport to be.
The governments of the world crumbled under the weight of their own populations. Unable to provide for all of the people, violence erupted in cities across the globe. Corporations and their private armies were sought out for protection and stability, and from this show of support they grouped together to establish themselves as the law of the land. Using their newfangled technologies, the corporations won the Nation Dismantlement War and have since herded people into corporate colonies, locking them into a futuristic serfdom. You are a Raven, one of those who chaffed under such conditions and have sought a life of greater independence, hiring your services out. With your Next robots (mechs), you will take on tasks, purchase and upgrade a fleet of Nexts, and raise all sorts of hell.
Armored Core 4’s story reminds me a lot of Ace Combat 3’s, in that they are kind of hard to get into at first, with dramatic and slightly vague narrations, but there is something about them that introduces what could be a great yarn. Unlike Namco’s offering, Armored Core doesn’t deliver the kind of polished mechanics, excellent pacing, and solid design. With ten years behind them for this one series alone, one would think that From Software would be delivering some mind-blowing stuff. Unfortunately, we’re given something that’s more akin to okay-but-pretty-boring stuff.
The real star here isn’t so much the giant mechs or the futuristic setting but what you can do with the armored giants. From the pre-mission menu, you are able to purchase other schematics (new Next units) or tinker with your current model. There are options to customize shoulders, legs, head, chest, arms, each having dozens of options, as well as dozens more miscellaneous options, like radar jammers – it’s pretty staggering.
Once you have your unit set up, which often takes numerous rounds of switching items around to get the proper balance of cost, weight, offensive and defensive capabilities, you are ready to take on one of the missions. There are only a handful of mission types, your clients will have you defend an object or assault a target, with a little variety for each type. By and large, the missions are boring. After sitting through some lengthy load menus, you’ll often be confined to a fairly small action area and thrust into combat without any sort of contextual build-up. There are several missions that actually have you sitting in one spot, firing away at whatever comes into your range of fire. These missions, and often the structures themselves, are counterintuitive to the Next design, which are units that aren’t the lumbering behemoths of MechWarrior but the agile humanoid Gundam Wing types. With responsive controls and a liberal boos meter, you would expect that these large cities or planes would allow you to zip around and engagement in the ‘Oh cool!’ combat the intro and packaging promise.
When the game does open up a little, Armored Core 4 can be an exhilarating experience – strafing left and right, lasers and missiles zipping past, firing away with your portable arsenal and then closing for a melee kill with your charged blade. More often than not, it’s a few strafes, warnings that you’re leaving the combat area, failing a mission without a clue as to just what went wrong other than you messed up, and either completing a mission in a minute (or less) or having to go back to the garage to tweak your Next because you were ignominiously tossed around.
The graphics can also be troublesome. The intro and some of the levels are gorgeous, if a tad barren: one night level set in the desert has flairs lighting your way, complete with the kind of lighting that one would expect to impress; another level is set in a flooded city, with skyscrapers crumbling as your makeshift cover succumbs to your enemies’ firepower; and some impressive large structures, dotted with defense turrets, dominating the screen. Many times, though, the glare and washed-out graphics will hide key targets and make it difficult to lead enemies. The game’s targeting system can be spotty, despite a chase camera being available, losing locks fairly easily, so not being able to keep track of a target will often put you in a bind.
Many of the missions are so similar that I often opted to continue to the next chapter as quickly as possible. When I was treated to an interesting and thoughtfully crafted level, I could see how the series could last so long. Unfortunately, it wants to combine the combat of an arcade title and the selection of a simulator without doing much to smooth the way in-between. While some fans might find the series becoming a little too casual – heating and overheating has been removed; flight is also much easier with jumps lasting longer and its corresponding meter replenishing rapidly; and boosting around is far less detrimental than before - the excessive amount of customizing required, complete with online modes that allow trading symbols and fighting your perfectly tweaked Next, will satisfy most. Newcomers, on the other hand, will find the revolving door level design not enough for the lengthy bouts in the garage.
Overall: 5/10
Uninspiring missions and an uneven design make Armored Core 4 a bit of a bear. There are enough missions so that there are a handful of exciting moments when the game begins to feel as it should, but you have to wade through a bit of tedium to get there. Fans of mech tinkering will find much more to like than the rest, thanks to the highly customizable Next units and a hanger ready to outfit them in all sorts of gear. The fact that battling robots and a story straight out of Syndicate fails to keep up any sort of momentum or excitement, well, let’s say that the asking price is too much.
