Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: Silent Line: Armored Core

Written by Chris Reiter on September 10, 2003

Full Review: Bird feed won't save you from these metal beasts.

Many a game where larger than life machines were in the player's control have been developed over the years. But none have lasted nearly as long as the only one that actually lets you customize your own robot for the purpose of money making on crippling another corporation's behalf. Since the beginning, Armored Core, which released on the PlayStation in 1997, formed into one expansion after another. Soon enough the underground cult favorite had fans battling it up every year, as every year after the first followed these expansions. The expansions themselves, while not much different from their previous iterations, still offered enough new missions, enough new parts, and enough new features in each one that you could practically call every Armored Core since then a full on sequel. Silent Line: Armored Core is Agetec's latest build-up-and-bust-up upgrade, and it's damn ready to deliver.

In a future where greed embodied warring corporations, vying to overpower one another, an Artificial Intelligence greater than any fueled the passion for everlasting conflict and death. This super computer known as the Controller was defeated then by the only metal beings strong enough to be called on in any a time of crisis: elite mercenaries called Ravens. Freed of their lust for wanting to topple everything that wasn't on their side, humanity found resolve and proceeded to restore their losses for a better tomorrow. But peace is something for fairy tales, and a new evil has arisen in one of Earth's newly discovered regions named Silent Line. When the companies who want to expand over Silent Line cannot penetrate its defenses, once again people have fallen victim to the desire to harm each other for their own beneficial circumstances. Spread your wings Raven -- because the call of the prey is looking for the ultimate predator inside of you.

Explaining the series of Armored Core to another person is kind of like explaining life. It's always there, and so is Armored Core. Granted, a new edition only comes out every year and life is always around us...but like in Armored Core, life seems to revolve the same way except for those few instances when something new is introduced. Naturally, Silent Line takes the same old and refurbishes it up a little. Had you been in a coma, terminally ill, had a sex change, or were poked with a sharp needle filled with an amnesia toxin and had since been in recovery for the last five years or so, let me fill you in on what Armored Core is really all about. It's a mecha game, meaning giant robots who destroy one another in battle. Your task is to tailor your own robot with its own color scheme, its own parts, and even its own name through gaining money for customization purposes from story-based missions or an Arena ladder stocked up on other Raven competitors like yourself. Building your desired killing machine takes a lot of work to achieve, but with enough practice, and time, and money, it's possible to face any threat and win (or if you've already got a save file from Armored Core 3, you can just load that puppy up and be a master of disaster from the very start).

If there's one place you need to learn how to use first though, it's the Raven's Nest. The Raven's Nest as in the previous games is a hub of sorts for the overall single player experience. Both the Arena and mission modes, as well as other functions emanate from this same Nest. Basically, you have all your options available here in order to maintain your robot for its betterment. Choosing the mission mode for example enters into a forum of selectable missions. You'll find that some missions pay big money, while others pay less. Depending on what mission you choose though can have an effect on your progress, because once a mission is completed a letter grade will be presented to you along with the green for your efforts. Losing Armor Points (health) or a lot of ammo results in a deduction from the initial payment offer. And if you fail to beat the mission properly, like sustaining damage to structures that are meant not to be tampered with, will lower your grade. How often your grade remains at the bottom, your mech will see a slow development in skill or even a lack of free robot parts received from the Global Cortex (your supplier of gadgetry). This also means that you won't be able to advance in the Arena rankings, as those with a higher status can challenge against every single other Raven for some money. So obviously, surviving missions of terminating Raven threats, rescuing researchers in dangerous situations, protecting valuable assets, or even sneaking into a heavily guarded fortress without being noticed are important not to neglect.

Once you have enough money from either mission fishing or Arena topping though (taking out Ravens one at a time in successful order inside the battle arena of your choice), it all comes down to constructing your metal machine from scrap. Customary as it may seem with every Armored Core title, Silent Line's surprise yet again is options available for new parts to go with the old ones. Every year, every Armored Core, the parts of your mech are in a combined range of hundreds of assorted tools you'll find in the Garage's shop, including heads (all equipped with different radar or computer feedback modules, or not), legs (lightweight humanoid ones that'll make you go fast, heavy ones that make you go slow, or even pairs of tank or hover bottoms fit these bills), arm or back weapons (items such as machine guns, bazookas, missiles, laser swords, plasma rifles, sniper rifles, chain guns, napalm rounds and more), and introducing shields (attach this to your arm, and the effect of damage will feel less severe from now on). Enormous robots with so many flavors of destruction to choose from are limited to what they can taste as usual, as the more you pack onto to your creation, the more likely its carry on weight limits exceeds and thus it is impossible for it to function within the game's universe. This is why there's plenty of replay value to come back to in Silent Line -- with so many options available, you can literally spend hours tinkering with what parts you may want to use, and to put your ass kicking mecha to the test with them on for the ride.

Accomodating your mech with the most high-tech equipment isn't the only thing to do in the game, but it is one of the main reasons that makes playing Silent Line like any other Armored Core so well. This same evidence of course holds true for what's new to the franchise. And like every year, Silent Line provides its players with some significant changes -- this year's biggest being the AI Arena. You're not only able to train yourself anymore: now players can teach a computer the ropes. Strapping on parts, the colors, and the whole package here, individual AI clones can be injected alive with the ability to mimic what your actions and reactions are in combat with one another. Supplying it with these intimate details, you can literally reveal your strengths and weaknesses to the computer so that later on in an Arena roundup, you can try out and see which of these schooled Ravens stands at the head of the class. Also fresh and raring to go in Silent Line is the possibility that you're no longer restricted to the game's default third person view, where by configuring the cockpit a little will switch over to a first person perspective. Moving into a first person view may not sound like a big deal, and it isn't -- but this game enhancement does allow for precision targeting. Unfortunately however, it's impossible to change back into a third person view of the robot during the actual gameplay, meaning once you morph into getting up close and personal with your machine, there's no way of getting back until you're able to quit the game and reach into the cockpit menu to once again process your desires manually. Besides all the cool features a single player can partake in Silent Line, there's also options available for two players, in the game's two player versus mode where you and a friend can either sign in for bouts, or get three friends together with four different PlayStation 2 consoles and four i.Link cables for an experience in four player matchups (depending on if you can afford all that).

Over the years you've been someone who's figured out how to play Armored Core games, or not. Fairly, it's clear enough to say that Armored Core games have a style all their own in a Resident Evil fashion. Where in the Resident Evil series gamers either criticized it for its remote control feeling or learned how to handle it instead, gamers also have done the same with Armored Core by mocking or coming into their own with its playability. One thing that's happened to Resident Evil over the years though is that it's had many platform homes to call its own all with a slightly different play pattern for each controller. Armored Core on the other hand has always been a PlayStation/PlayStation 2 exclusive, and because of this it's had very little change in its overall compatibility with players' fingertips.

From once being a directional-pad-only game, the franchise was later blessed with analog. Even with that, the game has always remained mostly unhinged from its original setup -- which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on if you're already used to directing a gun toting Raven or not. But if you're not, then the operation scheme does take a while to master as you've got to switch weapons with the triangle button, slash your sword or open doors with the circle button, turbo boost your rocket pack with the X button, and fire your selected weapon with square. That's easy and all, but it's the moving of the robot that's a little tricky where you've got to press the left analog stick or directional keys to walk in the specified direction. If you want to go faster, you'll press for the booster. But if you can't see what is hitting you, and there are a lot of times where you must redirect the camera, tapping on the L2 and R2 buttons raise and lower its position. What's always been an annoyance though is that in these moments when you're the target and you're constantly being fired upon, sometimes the only weapon you have available are a heavy back type, which forces the Raven to bend over and fire while immobile. This also affects the Raven's turning rate, as you can rotate its top side like a tank cannon...and like a tank cannon it will motion in a circle slow enough to take a good stretch. Albeit, there are ways around this slow measurement scheme as the booster charge that makes the Raven fly or by punching down on R3 that will then bolster the Raven forward in a speed of greatness to reach certain destinations much quicker. And lastly, pushing L1 and R1 has the Raven strafe left and right, where L3 brings your inside part (be it a floating support item that can disrupt lock-ons, or something else) out of hiding for an awkward control getup to get into -- but once you're into it, you'll find it's not so much trouble anymore.

Down to every Raven model, background environment, and even the animations, Silent Line appears unsurprisingly similar to it last installment in the long-lived mech series. By no means is that a bad character trait either. Seriously, Silent Line's mecha is all so well articulated around every gorgeous detailed section that connects to a larger series of other moving things to make the robot look exactly like a robot. Then there's everything else the outstanding character models in the game overshadow, like tiny vehicle models in some levels you can step on and crush or theа finely textured space age levels to navigate (and blast to hell) -- from jungle, to factories, to underground cavern settings, the game's stages fit the game in every sense, yet they're mostly the same thing as before (or at least strikingly no different) as recycled material is one of Armored Core's well-known common factors.

Using the same thing over doesn't necessarily stand for bad taste. From Software, the game's developer, seems to like using the saying, "If it isn't broken, don't fix it." But breaking things is a large part to why Silent Line manages to stay tasty. In combat with other big guys, the smoke that trails from the dust blanketed brownish surface and from behind your booster pack as the flame lights up your Raven's shadowy backside, and then crashes into another robot with one slice of the heated laser sword, making it burst into flames and sizzle and spark in its destruction all looks wonderful in the highlighted action involved in the game. Sections of buildings or any other interactive thing inside a stage can be decimated too, with all the lovely looking grenade blasts, explosive missiles damage, the fast fire of a machine gun, or even the powerful shock of a plasma ray darting straight into another Raven's chest plate that gives the game an extra touch of niceness.

Inside of a game invention where mechs are paid to kill, Armored Core has always stuck to a techno formula in its background music that actually strings the game's score rather well. These techno mixes aren't like those dance songs you'll find at clubs though; they're of the electronic sort with speedy beats for the hectic encounters or more of a stylish arrangement like the one found in the FMV intro (which again expands on From's ability to spawn their own design of unique perfection for robot action footage and a techno track to be paired together for something so amazing it would inspire even a suicidal maniac to rethink their deathly thoughts and attend computer classes so he or she could come up with a game intro as exquisite as one found in any of the Armored Core releases). Appearing once again are a variety of voice actors that perform a decent job at shoveling out the info you need to know about each mission represented before you enter it, but even with that in mind, the voices themselves aren't too high up on the ladder to be anything more than just mission narrators. And as for sound, it can be anything. It's the metal feet of a Raven stomping across any terrain, it's the explosive burst of death from another enemy's fall, it's the sound of missiles cruising through the sky, or it's the crackling of fire surrounding all around you. All of this and more sounds good enough to not want to stop listening, as always.