Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9449 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: 505 Games
• Released on: 2007-06-22
• Rating: To Be Announced
• Platform: PLAYSTATION 3

Manufacturer's Description
Armored Core 4 exploits the awesome power of PlayStation 3 to deliver astounding visuals and eye-watering special effects, including dynamic lighting and shadows, swirling water and mysterious fog. Mech designs benefit from massively more detailed 3D models and the arenas and environments now offer a giant leap in interactivity and detail. Players can use these interactive features to their advantage, for instance by smashing open arena walls to let in the light and search for enemies, or by hiding in water to ambush rivals.

The classic customisation returns in full effect in Armored Core 4. Every element of the game is designed to offer players the highest possible level of customisation when designing and building their mechs. With just a few simple and intuitive steps, players can augment their creations with serious weaponry, external armour and internal hardware and then fine tune and tweak each unit for best performance. The possibilities are almost infinite! Players are able to test drive their creations in a series of trials and then, when ready for battle, challenge other mechs in order to advance through the exciting tournaments and leagues.

Multiplayer modes feature heavily in Armored Core 4, with deathmatch games and most importantly, full online support for battling with international players as well as exchanging match data, emblems and even entire robot creations.

With its abundance of features, awesome destructive firepower and fast-paced action, coupled with the incredible level of detail in customising mechs, Armored Core 4 is a sure-fire hardcore action game smash.

Customer Reviews

Amored Core 4 Review
The graphics are amazing. I like the idea that you can work your way up to completely customize your kick ass robot from it's colour to the booster rockets that are attached to it's legs. But I think that the level of technical expertise required to calibrate your robot's stabilisers and CPU are a tad over the heads of the average twelve year old, unless they have played previous Amoured Core games. Since I'm new to the series, tuning up my mech required several re-readings of the manual before I'd grasped the basics (I'm not all that convinced that it means very much to your mech's performance in the game anyway). The plot is that you're a mercenary for hire in a not-too-distant war torn future. So there isn't really a plot.
The levels are wide and expansive, yet you cannot stray outside the area of your mission or you fail it. I find this irritating, since you own a beast of a machine that can go wherever it wants.
Ammo is surprisingly scarce, given the number of enemies that you must fight. Players often find themselves fighting an end of level boss with no ammo at all.
Close quarters fighting is a joke and largely pointless unless the player makes one lucky lunge at his opponent for a killing blow. It is usually uneccessary and potentially suicidal to get too close to your often heavily armed and extremely fast moving opponents. The unarmed combat of this game needs some serious rethinking for a sequel. The ability to block incoming strikes and throw targets would be helpful and quite cool.

Sadly, the ability to create amazing war machines has been rendered pointless by the game's lack of depth in just about all major aspects of the game. Buy it because it's interesting and play it a little to pass the time, but that's all.

Definitely an improvement from the older AC games
First thing anyone who first plays this game will notice is this; the controls are pretty difficult to pick up, even for people who've played other AC games. Once you've got a grasp of them though, the gameplay is extremely good fun. The main change in controls is the separate buttons for left and right weapons and switching between them and you have to be able to remember and switch weapons quickly which allows you to use weapons such as the grenade launcher/energy cannons with a gatling gun/rifle, or just two grenade launchers.
Boosting has been much improved in AC 4 making the game a lot more fluid as well, even when almost out of energy you actually still recover energy while boosting along the ground and the quick boost functions are more useful.

An earlier reviewer said that it has become useless to use an energy blade for close combat... this is not true. While you can't just hope to boost around slashing everything with blades, they are an extremely efficient way for specific missions and almost necessary for some for an S grade on hard mode, although I've there are quite a few missions i haven't done on hard mode at the moment. The online mode is impossible at the moment, there are simply no players online in Europe, Japan is where the AC and mech games seem to be popular.

Overall you need to spend a lot of time and thought while playing, some of the missions can be completed with little effort but the real fun comes from being able to blast the crap out of everything, dodging and maneuvering so that you complete missions feeling like you actually used some skill. This game allows huge customization and constant tweaking of stats so the really it is down to you how much you can enjoy it and how long it will last. I strongly recommend it, if you can't get it, at least try and get a friend to ;)

Under-appreciated
First let me say that if you don't like mech games then you aren't really going to like this one. The control system is slightly more accesible than some titles but this is still a mech game at the end of the day.
The graphics on this title are its best feature with and excellent draw distance and sharp lines plus a multitude of landscapes to explore.
The gameplay is fun but can be very frustrating at first. The targeting system seems to have a life of its own until you get better parts and upgrade it and the various boost types you can do left me bewildered. Once you get past these and stick with it the game develops into an enjoyable affair.
The part I really love about the game is the customisation aspect. As with most of the game this is very confusing at first with little or no help from either the manual or the in-game help. It is a matter of trial and error til you find a mech that suits you.
The game also features an online part which sounds great in theory but in practice I have never seen another person on there so as with most of the PS3 online games (with the exception of R:FOM) it is plagued by lack of players.
All in all i think this game has the potential to be great but is very frustrating getting to that point and a lot of people will give up before realising the games full potential.