There are just some facts in life that are proven truths. The theory of relativity, water is wet, and robot video games make for great concepts. Agetec is one of the game developers that have capitalized on that truth for around ten years. The Armored Core series has established itself a long time ago offering a dizzying array of parts, guns, and, rockets to spec out your giant robot (called ACs) over an equally impressive number of missions. Early on in Armored Core’s life it was established that you either love the game or you hate it. It was a stigma that did not go away. For better or worse, it did not seem to phase the development team as they had their hardcore fanbase that spanned across the PS1, PS1, and PSP. With a new publisher, SEGA, it seems as if some fundamental changes were made in Armored Core 4 within the existing formula.

Death From High Definition Robots
Obviously, the biggest change to the Armored Core formula is the graphics. They have been bumped up into the 21st century with the help of the PS3. The ACs themselves are highly detailed so much as to see the heat waves coming from the boosters. It also helps when crafting your AC in your garage to see the amount of detail it took to create every little part to plug into your robot.

So the ACs look good but what about the rest of the game? Dismal, to say the least. Sure, Armored Core 4 is set in a world ravaged by political and military wars but that doesn’t excuse how the environments look. The cities are generic, nothing sticks out as points of interest and the battlefields might as well be Iowa, barely a boulder or even a mole hill. Textures are bland and when compared to other games look not up to par.

Thrusters Engage
Oddly enough, the controls got some tweaking from past Armored Core games. It should be noted that the tweaks were actually for the better. Boosting around battlefields is very easy and there are some different maneuvers if you want to evade incoming missiles. You also have some nice control over the weapons and how you select then fire them. There were some more changes done to the user interface that made the game friendlier to newcomers by not being so cluttered but, at the same time, it could make hardcore fans angry for not feeling like the same.

The audio department is just as lacking as the rest of the game. The intro narration to the missions are poorly localized and come off very cheesy. AC sound effects do not sound believable either. For gigantic robots, they don’t make that much noise.

In The Future You Are Forced To Have Fun
If you think of some of your favorite video games, you might have realized that when you are having fun, it feels effortless. The opposite is true for Armored Core 4. Every mission and every match feels like someone is telling you this should be fun. It is sad to see a game try so hard but fail on many accounts. For the missions, they are far too short to be entertaining and the loading screens and mission briefing are generally longer than the mission itself. If these short missions were put in place to speed up gameplay, the developers should have focused on longer missions that would at least be engaging, if not entertaining.