Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: Armored Core 3

Written by Chris Reiter on October 14, 2002

Full Review: These birds peck a little differently.

Three simple words: Armored Core 3. That's all you need to know in order to buy the latest and proclaimed to be the greatest title in the Armored Core franchise to arrive. If that's not enough for you, then perhaps you're unaware of one of the best underground PlayStation to PlayStation 2 mecha action leads in the industry today. For the first time in this series, the order of release has skipped a beat in its expansion set. The original Armored Core had two of its own expansions to call its own. The second on the other hand only had one. Why? In order to mold a game towards perfection, one must revamp, reinvent, and rejuvenate its entirety into something that looks just like its now released heavy mech action game. And that's just what Agetec hopes to prove.

Settled on Earth, humans have long since moved from the red planes of Mars for new life and opportunity. Most of all though, the remnants of humans only exist for one thing and one thing only -- and that thing is to attend to their greed. Here's where you come in. You're at your beginning in the line of duty to make some cold hard cash hired as a Raven. Mercenaries to the core, you only bow out to one master; and that master is the one who pays you the most money. With a deeper plot than ever before, Armored Core 3 focuses on a mysterious power behind the individual corporations that are looking in to take one another out for their own sakes. And that power called "The Controller" makes and breaks whatever exists. If you don't play by its rules, then you play by no one's rules. Though, nothing matters to you except making it to the top of the ladder. Raven, it's time now. Time to see what you're made of.

There have always been more than enough reasons to buy the latest expansion or sequel package to the Armored Core games. For Armored Core 3, it begins with for the first time ever, four player robot combat sessions. Only in the past releases could you go up against a friend. Now though players can hook up via the i.Link Network support, provided you and three friends each have a copy of the game, a TV, and a PlayStation 2 and Dual Shock 2 controller to connect with. If not, you could always enter into the two player mode already compacted into the game's blueprint design to give you and a buddy the same satisfaction the series has dished out.

Even if you don't have any friends, Armored Core 3 is chalked up with mounds of replay value. In addition to the single player mission mode, the favorable single player Arena tournament makes its return to the tray. When you're not making money from competitive offers to kill, protect, retrieve, dismantle, defend yourself, etc., you're earning it by proving and improving your skill in a chart of 50+ other Ravens similar to yourself that you're the best mecha warrior of them all. Within the Arena's walls, you fight against a wide array of unique robots that are armed to the teeth with their own style of weaponry and their own style of fighting tactics. You are able to choose between varieties of battle areas to take them all down in one by one until you reach the top spot amongst them.

But to get far in either the Arena or multiplayer matchups with your friends, you'll also need to spend some time building loot through the slightly modified single player mission area. It's changed in a way that you're now graded on your performance within a letter system aside from the same old deduction of credits taken if you've beaten the mission successfully or not, by how much damage inflicted on your part, or the amount of ammo lost will all be generated once again from the big payoff. The letter grade itself starts you out with an E ranking and gradually rises to an A level the more efficient you become. In effect, this allows you a one-ticket pass into the higher rankings of the Arena. Without a C ranking for example, you can't fight the C set of Ravens that await you. Thus, you need to improve your mech parts as well as your skill to pilot one through and through.

Additionally, the single player mission now does what no other Armored Core before could do -- and that is the option to bring a wingman or two, to fight by your side during a hectic mission. Each of these pilots need to be compensated into action in order to aid you, but it's worth every penny if you're not the best Armored Core player in the world. To become the best, you must first be able to get a hang of the character control, which is still very much the same way as it's ever been. Long time Armored Core players should have the least to worry about from coming to grips with the playability once again, while newcomers won't. Firing away at the enemy still involves locking on to what's ahead of you and ripping it to shreds. Jumping, flying, and gliding all originate from the turbo boost function, where it's easy to press the X button to light up your engine and direct your robot faster than ever in a thrust of power forward, backward, and sideways in combination with the strafe buttons, or directly up above you. Switching between weapons is just as easy, as is charging forward with an energy sword attack. The only consistent problem the game has never really improved upon is its slow rotation of character movement. You could be the most powerful, merciless killing machine of them all, but that doesn't matter much, because while you're waiting around for a few seconds for your robot to complete a full 360║ turn, you can have missile, laser, heat, bullets, and all other different kinds of fire ramming into you and taking away your lifespan while you can do nothing about it. If only From Software figured out a way to alter this, then I could imagine how much more fun the gameplay would actually be.

Gone is the ability to load an already made Raven from a past Armored Core game. Now that you have the chance to start from scratch, there's more legroom to start a new effort in regaining your developmental process of creating the ultimate mecha to your liking. The whole point to Armored Core 3 and its preceding offers is designing a large robot and sending it off to combat in order to modify it even further with the credits you've collected. Instead of just one mech though, Armored Core 3 lets you play around with up to three single mechas in which all can be made to look, act, and feel the same or different way with a host of new as well as old shop parts. There's literally hundreds of variations of pieces in which to select from, including grenade launchers, machineguns, plasma rifles, shotguns, laser weapons, missile launchers, flamethrowers, energy blades, sniper rifles, and lots more that round off the weapon assembly.

Aside from figuring out what you'll crumble the opposition with, you also need to think about how your body structure will be supported. Amongst head, core (body), leg, booster, generator, extension, inside, fcs (targeting device), and optional parts, there's a lot to think about in terms of how much each item costs, how much weight your mech's body or legs can hold, how much ammo you'll need and if the weapon provides it, what type of weapons you need, if the parts you've been using forever are beginning to wear their usefulness against the new challenges that await you, and much more. Figuring all of this out gives the game a fine definition of learning how to balance and ultimately limit yourself in one area so that you can't go too far or too little in being at the top of your game.

More now than ever, From Software has upped the ante in the stock of which parts you can now purchase and equip. From even went as far as to introduce an all new "Exceed Orbit" area: a part not attached to you, but still resides as a separate entity that departs from you, and hovers around you; emitting laser fire and such. Other parts, like the leg ones, feature new options for you to choose -- such as thinly shaped flying embodiments, similar in ways to the tank model. With so much riding on you now, there are also ways to lessen the load. Players can literally drop parts during a fight in order to lose that extra weight they don't need anymore in order to gain somewhat of an edge on the heavier competition.

Like the gameplay engine, the sheer intensity of this year's Armored Core offering has been rebooted for the better. Don't expect anything too different than from what has been seen in the past, because Armored Core 3 still simulates an appearance to its Armored Core 2 brethren. That's not necessarily a poor negligence in any form, because the game has always looked great. From a snow and icy mountain region cast into pitch black, to a forest landscape full of tree surroundings circled by a thick mist across the ground, a desert wasteland amounting to nothingness, barren factories set in dark and light tones, and even futuristic city sights under the black of night, the background areas are all modeled quite well, but don't raise the bar enough in highest of quality. What's new about the graphics though is not just the bit of improvement in the way background environments look, but how you can actually decimate entirely new sections that in past titles were unthinkable, starting with the shatter of windows and moving onto electric outlets that power the energy to light the visibility of an underground garage.

And, as usual, the Raven character models are complete with everything you'd expect them to be -- visually and anatomically mastered. Every little part you put on is finely detailed to the last mechanical alliance it synchs with through the rest of your Raven's frame. The movements of you and the rest of what's on screen also turn out to look great as they always have. Whether you're facing MT robots, tiny laser firing pods, or even your own kind -- the Raven, the mechanics in every movement looks just like how a towering robot would act against armies of others like yourself. Inside the action is where things really fire up however. And it's there that gazing upon the backside of your Raven as it glows blue from the effect of the booster's radiating shine, the sparks that fly around you from scraping metal against metal, rapid fire of bullet and energy mangle the forces ahead, and balls of bursting flames ignite the screen as a grenade burst impacts your end and smoke clouds rise up above that each takes on a true form of beautiful warfare.

Armored Core 3's sound aspect is another significant role: one it won't let you down on. Especially in the intro FMV to the game, the music soundtrack has again been tuned with the special treatment of a placid techno beat that soon starts to build up, signifying and mixing in well with the action it's facing on screen. This, amongst others, is the type of bounding and amiable selective tracks set within. While good, the voice acting has never really been too much of anything close to a relatively significant to the series. There are a few different speaking parts, all with their own characteristic tones. It's just that they don't emphasize their acting abilities enough, and overall, everything about it all falls a bit flat to becoming something slightly more important than its mediocre presence.

You can feel as though you're there in the game when listening to it in action, on the other hand. Being the second PlayStation 2 game in America to support Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound -- the first one being Spider-Man -- you can be sure that Armored Core 3 takes full advantage of a sound setup that anyone can appreciate. And it shows, from the lifelike pounding of tons of heavy metal stomping across the ground, explosions cracking through the sky all around you, laser fire zipping by, the crackle and roar of flame damaging your effectiveness from the flare of a flamethrower, and much, much more.