Armored Core: Nexus for PlayStation 2 Reviews by Gamers

And we're still playing Armored Core. It's a series that has been slowly evolving. Despite one of the new Nexus discs bragging that it's a revolution, Armored Core the eighth doesn't really revolutionize anything. In fact, there's a ninth and tenth Armored Core already in development. What does that tell you? This kind-of-sort-of abruptly leads us square into my first problem with Nexus: it doesn't fix many of the faults that have been hovering around the series and thus doesn't really warrant a purchase given its placement between the already solid old games and the assumedly solid new ones. The second major problem is that while Nexus makes wholly appreciated additions of its own, they sometimes work to inflate smaller, preexisting problems. So let's do this!

The big selling point of Armored Core is not the actual game, it's the customization that comes between play. Play centers around maneuvering large and somewhat unwieldy mechs (Armored Cores or ACs) around tight and open environments, though usually within the closed walls of claustrophobic interiors or between the buildings of your average futuristic military base.

Despite the mech moniker, it's more of a traditional shooter than a purist's simulation -- especially now with the advent of dual analog control. The smoother, more easily manageable movement and targeting systems make Nexus feel more like a conventional third-person shooter than a diehard sim, which works and doesn't, depending on how big of an enthusiast you are. Basically, if you're crazy and loved the previous control scheme, you'll hate this. If you're normal, you'll like it.

Whether you're an insanely devout follower or casual player of Armored Core, the new control configuration doesn't mean that the game is some kind of painfully straightforward MechAssault that revolves entirely around mindlessly circle strafing opponents until something goes boom. No, Armored Core's gameplay is driven by some intentionally clumsy lock-on and targeting systems that mimic the functionality of air combat, giving the game a distinct feeling of really piloting an actual machine. Even this stab at mecha authenticity leads to a few problems.

First, in-game targeting and hit detection systems are imprecise and purposefully infuriating. Auto-targeting is particularly frustrating. Imagine trying to hit a stupid box and wondering aloud with many curse words why your bloody damn gun keeps swaying over to the right to kill some unimportant enemy that happens to be "more threatening" than the box. It's a clobberin' time kind of targeting that'll make anyone with a mind and a soul real mad. Throw in a few all too familiar camera issues and you've suddenly found yourself losing missions simply because that's the only way the game was going to let it go down. But those are features!

Actually, these aren't even the greatest issues regarding the gameplay. The biggest problem with Nexus' new is that practically every mission has no real substance to it. There is no sense of accomplishment from having beaten a particularly challenging objective, nor is there any real sense of loss when you fail. It's just, "Oh well, time to try a different mission." It feels more like a monotonous string of easy to maddeningly hard levels that always fail to climax. It's like watching the same looping set of Girls Gone Wild tapes and wondering where your life went so horribly wrong. The first twenty tapes can be mildly interesting, but eventually it's just enough. In Armored Core's case, it's practically eight games of enough already. The storyline develops through some arguably interesting blurbs about the current political and economical climate of Core life and how rival corporations are all vying for the same land / money / products / artifacts / whatever, but there's no real glue to join these missions together. It's just a start, a stop, a go, and suddenly the girls have gone wild. Like we said so long ago, this means the real selling point of Nexus, as we finally come back to it, is not gameplay but customization. What Armored Core offers is a nearly unrivaled level of sophisticated mech personalization; it's deep, strategic, and very fun. It can't all be perfect though. Nexus brings with it a few changes and additions to the base formula -- mainly the real-world inspired accumulation and dissipation of heat -- but still fails to fix any of the problems or improve upon any of the inadequacies of the former games.

The biggest customization gripe is that since there are 150 missions, 40 arena opponents, and 400 customizable parts, you have a lot to screw around with, and not a lot of really helpful interface considerations. The availability of a mouse plug-in means you can click on things faster, but this doesn't change the fact that you're still going to have to click through a hundred different things to reach an end. Mech customization breaks down to a lot of trial and error to determine individual likes and dislikes and a lot of numeric tabulation to determine statistical superiority and inferiority. At home I have notepads filled with strings of numerals regarding the various pluses and minuses of specific parts and how they compare with combinations of other parts. It's ridiculous. Worse, it's just wrong. This should not happen. People who come to my house should not laugh at me because I need to fill old Shakespeare margins with Armored Core arm advantages. Look, the depth is appreciated, but the GUI needs work. It needs quick-glance comparison charts. It needs better graphical and statistical readouts. It needs to be an all-in-one buy, sell, equip, and test menu. It is not.

As is, spending so much time meticulously piecing together a very smart, very capable AC just to get into a mission and be pummeled within the first eight seconds is a little disappointing. Had there been better briefings that indicated exactly what would be required from the player in any given mission, this problem may have been done away with completely. I'd like to see a system that accurately describes the foes that will be presented, the objective that is at hand, the strength of the opposition, and the nature of the environment. If we are provided any of this we could realistically be capable of equipping our Cores to win or at the very least be competitive.

©2004, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved