Armored Core 4 (2006)

I am on a journey to beat 360 random Xbox 360 games. Here's my next adventure

Game number 66 was Armored Core 4. This is a fast paced action game where you build a robot mech suit (think Gundam) and have to perform a series of missions that vary widely in size and content. I have never played an Armored Core game or any game like this and had a great time.

What is the story? I honestly have no idea what was supposed to be happening in the story of this game. I don’t like to watch explanation videos before I write a review… but it's going to be the first thing I do once this is done. I am not even completely sure who I am playing as. I think I am an Armored Core soldier that works for the massive company GA (don’t know what that stands for). I may work for the company Anatolia though?

The game is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth, where the entire planet is run by companies instead of governments. These companies have essentially destroyed the Earth by polluting it with something called Kojima particles and have herded the whole population into a few cities. You are sent out on missions for the companies and need to quell rebel forces, defend your company, and eventually destroy one of the other companies. It’s cool I guess, but mostly just serves as background for the awesome missions.

One issue I have with the story is the narrator lady. Basically, she is the person who explains the missions you do and offers commentary throughout. She is interesting and honestly very helpful, but she starts saying some crazy stuff that is never explained. Like halfway through the game she will start talking about her father… who I assume is the other narrator (yeah there's a second one that only comes in end-of-chapter cutscenes). I have no idea who this dude is or what his motivations are or any of the lore behind the events that the narrator lady is talking about. She will also start to get sentimental later in the game. She will talk about the two of you escaping together and about how far yall have come. Lady I don’t know anything about you and have absolutely zero sense of time. For all I know these missions could be happening 1 day apart or 10 years apart. It really doesn’t let you know. Maybe I’m just an idiot, but I could not follow what was going on for the life of me. Someone else playing this may though.

While the story makes no sense, the combat and gameplay are top notch! It is an absolute blast (pun intended) to control the mech. You can zip around extremely fast and fly for a limited amount of time! Levels will become much easier once you figure out how to control the mech efficiently. By the end, I was dodging lasers and shooting down enemies from the sky! It was awesome!

You also get to fully customize your armored core (AC) and when I say fully customize I mean EVERYTHING. You can change out every one of its body parts, the weapons, the boosters, the radar, the engine, and much more. You can also tune your thrusters to subtly change the way the AC moves. Finally, you can also get special stat points to help boost important stats! It is one of the best customization systems that I have seen outside of simulation racing games.

My personal mech was heavily focused on firepower and movement. I didn’t have a ton of points in defense. Early on in the game I used a machine gun and a cannon, with 2 scatter missile launchers. By the end of the game I had upgraded those scatter missile launchers and made my two main weapons bazookas! I could blow just about anything up! One big recommendation I would give to new players is to switch things out and have fun with it! You can sell your weapons back and not get too hurt for it. Try out different things and find what you like. Also, do not be afraid to swap things up for a specific mission. One example I have of this is an early mission where you have to defend a city from a ton of missiles. You need to shoot down an absolute ton of these things, so I used two machine guns for that mission instead of my normal load out. Try stuff like that and you will have a smoother time!

The mission structure is extremely varied and level based. You are presented with few options and shown how much money they pay out. You then select one and will be given a short synopsis of what it is before being dropped in. Armored Core 4 is great because every mission is different and unique. One mission will task you with destroying an enemy AC, while the next will be about shooting down supply planes, while the third will see you infiltrating a base and taking down a specific target. Yes, these missions all involve combat and mechs fighting, but they succeed in making the missions varied and fun. There were very few that I thought were bad missions (the one where you have to find enemies without a radar sucks though).

Overall, Armored Core 4 is a great game! I have no idea how the other games in the series play, but I am probably going to look into playing them! I loved the short, varied mission structure and the fast-paced combat! I will admit that this is a pretty niche game, but if you are interested in mechs, Gundam, or the like then give it a try. I think Armored Core 4 is worth checking out. It is pretty short though and would have benefitted with 1-2 more chapters. Additionally, this is not a game you play for the story. (8/10)

I spent 4 hours, 50 minutes, and 6 seconds playing Armored Core 4.

I have spent a total of 840 hours and 28 minutes on the Road To 360 challenge so far.

Next Game: Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes

Coming from the original Armored Core, AC4 is an improvement in all aspects.

The controls (Control Type B) finally allow for aiming and shooting at the same time with the dual stick controls. Dual sticks were already implemented on the PS2, but I don’t own the console and emulation was not an option.

The levels were improved: No more corridors, instead the levels are mostly in open areas that allow for aerial combat. And if the level is set in a tight location, the layout is interesting enough for it not to feel boring.

Graphics are great. In a couple of levels the lighting seemed a bit off but otherwise it looks pretty stellar. There’s a level where it’s pitch black and an occasional flare lights up part of the area, that impressed me. Most of the levels have destructible environment, like scaffoldings, columns, in some locations you can level entire buildings even! And it’s also 60fps.

Tons of customization, you can paint different parts of your mech, even weapons. What is unique is that you can create your own piece of aerography and place it on any part of the mech. The toolset is pretty impressive. And yeah I know, it’s not THAT unique, since NFS games and other racers allowed for that but we’re talking about a third person shooter here, so it’s not something you see a lot.

The movement and overall game speed has increased, because you can now boost non-stop while on the ground, only going aerial will use up your boost. There’s also dashing which is going to piss you off, when enemy ACs use it to dodge another one of your shots.

The story is not that cohesive, apparently SEGA messed up the localization so the western release had less dialogue. But there are friendly ACs fighting alongside and there were some epic setpieces which made the experience pretty memorable.

All in all, if it’s your first Armored Core game, you’ll be fine. It’s a story reboot so you’re not going to miss anything by jumping straight into AC4. However the amount of different weapons and parts that affect tons of statistics could scare some people away so get ready to spend some time in the customization menu studying charts with lots of numbers on them.

One flaw is something the game really struggled with and it’s balancing. You can basically build a perfect AC that will absolutely destroy, some levels took me too little time to beat. The game doesn’t scale at all with the equipment you have, as a result you have an epic intro to a bossfight and then you just spam rockets and grenades for 15 seconds and you get an S ranking first try. But such is the nature of games with deep customization I guess.

Warning: the game has a thing called Regulations. It’s basically a patch that changes some gameplay elements but you can disable it if you don’t like the changes. The 1.0 version is said to be a bit broken and apparently they improved it with the regulations. But the PS3 regulations have been taken down and you can’t download them off of the PS Network anymore. The Xbox regulations are still there but you need Xbox Live Gold to access them. Yes, you have to pay to receive a patch for the single-player portion of your game.