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Armored Core 4 is the
latest instalment in the
Armored Core series. You are in charge of building your own
Armored Core unit and battling through Missions to complete the
game. There are six Chapters, each containing a number of Missions.
Missions include protecting areas, clearing areas of all enemy
presence and taking-out special armoured units known as Normals.
To begin
with there are only a small number of parts for you to customise
your Armored Core with and you have limited Credits with which to do
this. As you complete Missions, other parts are made available and
you are awarded Credits in order to purchase your selections.
Credits are awarded in relation to quotas given to you before the
Mission. The quotas include
ammunition use, damage and mission time. Depending on how much you
beat you quota, credits will be awarded accordingly.
You are
able to choose all parts to build your Armored Core, from missiles
and guns to processor chips and colours; with such eccentric
customisation options, players will always end-up building a
completely different machine. Even arms and legs can be varied,
giving the player the option of building a robot that looks like a
battle tank. If you build an Armored Core that is heavy and has a
lot of heavy duty weapons then you will find that the robot will
loose speed and manoeuvrability but will be able to withstand more
attacks and will cause higher damage to enemies. On the
 other hand
you may choose to have a robot that has very little armour and
smaller weapons but is able to manoeuvre easily making it a
difficult target to catch and a fast tool of war to fight with.
The
on-screen furniture shows you how much ammunition you have for each
weapon you are equipped with, and your Health. There is also a Radar
feature available and varies in range depending on the Radar that
you fitted to the Armored Core in construction. You are able to
change the view of the Radar from its original setting, but this
does make the game more difficult as it limits the area of vision.
The
controls work very well, utilising the Shoulder Buttons to change
your weapons, and A and B to fire left and right weapons
respectively. You need to ensure that the right weapon is selected
when you need it, as changing weapons uses valuable seconds that
will often leave your Armored Core open for attack.
All the
customisable features in the game are unlocked when completing
Missions in the Single-Player Campaign, but make Multi-Player an
amazing and almost infinite experience as there are so many
possibilities. Online play battles your customised Armored Core in
different scenarios against other players via XboxLIVE!. It
takes a while to get used to the quick speed of the game in
comparison to other Mech-Battling titles, such as FromSoftware’s own
ChromeHounds, but it works very well. You are able to choose
the Arena, how many people you would like to battle against and
whether you would like to use teams or prefer a standard Deathmatch
scenario.
Graphically the game looks very nice with amazing attention paid to
detail. This is reflected with such textures as the water and damage
to scenery from weapon fire. The background scenery and horizons
 look great giving a very realistic feel to the battle field.
The
music is not one of the games selling points. There is no endorsed
music and seems to be just different chords played randomly in the
background. It does not add any real depth to the game. The sound
effects however are very realistic. The noise of the weapons, the
sound of incoming fire and even the sound of flying over water is
good making the environment more believable.
Armored Core 4 is a highly
polished game with huge online Multi-Player potential. Simply
designing your Armored Core is a huge part of the game which should
be considered very carefully as it affects the entire way it is
played. Because of this, it’s easy to believe Armored Core 4
is a title that can be played again and again, and each time, a
genuinely different experience can be had. |
