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Armored Core 4 is the mech gamer's dream come true

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Armored Core 4 the last addition to the Armored Core Series and what a game it is, what a game. Awesome job by Sega. It's out on the XBOX360 and PS3. This game and these consoles were a match made in gaming heaven. The graphics and the sound are what is gonna do it for you complimented with awesome gameplay. You just cannot go wrong with AC4.

Stop and imagine this for a while. You work for a corporation and with you mechanical warrior of doom and destruction you fight against other corporations. You can run, fly glide and the arsenal you have at your disposal. If you like blowing things up you're just gonna love this. Missiles, lasers, machine guns and even swords. Have you ever heard of a big mech being super agile? Well they are in this game and then some. Armored Core 4 delivers to the mech gaming world where all others have failed. Think of this is your last hope, if this does not satisfy you nothing will and I have every confident that this one will. Yes....... It is that good of a game. Don't miss out on this guys Armored Core 4 is ready for you. The question is....... Are you ready for Armored Core????

Good, if you're renting it.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I had the chance to try out this title a couple of weeks ago. The last mech games I played were on the SNES--I can't even remember their names now, but they were good fun and I was looking for more of the same here. That is, unless you count Lost Planet as a mech game--which it is, but only to a degree. Most of the game takes place on foot. In Armored Core 4, all the action takes place in a six-story mech armed with weapons the size of tanks. Good times!

One thing I really liked about this game was the mobility of the mechs. They always felt cumbersome and unresponsive in every other mech game I've played, but not here. The jets you can use to "ski" along on the ground or fly through the air let you dodge incoming fire or skirt around a building to flank an enemy--and it looks cool as heck.

The action is intense--it's rare to have a moment where you're not being shot at in the missions. You must stay on the move, or you'll get hit with a volley that'll knock off half your AP (armor).

That said, I also found this game to be incredibly frustrating, play-wise.

For instance, you can click in a thumbstick to lock on a target...but rarely, if ever, do you lock onto the CORRECT target. You can have your crosshairs resting on an enemy, click to lock him in...and the game will lock on to a target a thousand feet behind you on the other side of a hill. It seems as if using that button locks you on to a completely random target in the level. Sometimes I would lock on, and not even be able to find the locked target. I would just proceed for the rest of the level without having the ability to use lock (since I couldn't figure out how, or even if, I could unlock the targets.)

The weapons feel underpowered. They aren't--they're devastating--but to fire a thirty-foot-long cannon and hear "PIP" as the sound effect and see a little yellow dot fly slowly toward the enemy--just doesn't do it justice. You can jet forward at almost the same pace as your rounds fly downrange. The refire rates are quite slow. The missiles are just streaks of gray smoke that may or may not hit the target (depending on the ones you're using--some do the trick nicely, others act like the Drunken Missile gun from Rise of the Triad). Sometimes your missiles will just fly into the ground. Reminds me of the old Vietnam-era Sparrow AAM that would just randomly decide whether or not it would stay locked on target.

And the controls--the controls were the worst aspect of the game, hands-down. They were completely counterintuitive, placing the jet controls on the triggers and the weapons on the A and X buttons by default. This led to me continually using my jets in combat and wondering why my enemies weren't exploding. I did reconfigure the controls by switching my weapons to the triggers and the jets to the buttons...but when I did that, I found that I couldn't use the jets and shoot at the same time. It required me to contort my right hand in an unnatural way trying to punch three buttons at the same time while holding down another. No matter which configuration I tried, I was always struck by how hard it was to press the right buttons in the right order. Seems like a weird thing for a videogamer of twenty years to say--and it is. I can pick up 99% of games in no time. This game I just couldn't get the hang of. The controls were too awkward.

Finally--and this is my last negative, I swear--the levels were very unbalanced. You will play one level and beat it without taking a hit...and then the very next level will be so frustratingly hard that you'll want to throw down your controller. And so on and so forth. The levels in this game either present no challenge whatsoever, or are nearly impossible to complete. Luckily, you can skip over most of the impossible ones (but not all of them, which is why this game was returned unfinished.)

Now, let's end on another high note.

There's a great deal of mech customization options in this game. Not only can you replace any part of your mech, from chassis to legs to arms to radar to missiles and backup weapons, but you can also repaint your mech to suit your tastes. You can even add your own custom insignia to your mech's shoulder, or use a pre-made one. Mine was dark red with black trim--Blood Angel colors. Gotta love that scheme.

If I could have mastered the controls and gotten past the imbalances, this game might have stayed in the console longer. As it is, it was quite good for a few hours of fast-paced shoot-em-up, but little more than that.

This game is definitely worth a rental--and if you can find it for 20 bucks or less, it's worth buying. I wouldn't pay new-game prices for a copy, though.

The most underated game on the 360

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 10, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Most professional game reviewers have three trends in their criticism of this game.

1. Missions are too short

Although some missions can be played in less time then it takes to load the mission, this is generally not the case. In past armored core games they had missions that would take long amounts of time to complete. This went against one of the main focuses of this game which was trial and error. Now instead of realizing half way through a 30 min. mission that you can not complete it cause you have run out of ammo, you won't have to commit 30 min. to trying the mission over again. This makes the game more approachable.

2. Bad story and Control scheme

Although the Controls are hard to master, its hard to imagine a different control setup if there were real Armored Cores scouring the planet. As for the story, it is pretty bad, but for mech games its not too bad.

3. Custimizing the Armored Cores is too complicated

For your first hour playing the game, yes it is too complicated. It won't be so baffling though that you'll give up.

4. Someone else told me that the game is too hard

TOO HARD? Not at all. I got through it with only restarting four missions over again.

Overall

The game play is amazing, the story is bad, the missions are A little too short, and the online component is fairly robust. Right now there is a lack of fast paced action games. Armored core 4 fills that gap even if it is just for the purpose of having fun and of corse blowing things up.

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