At first I thought it was all just a bad dream. The recently released trailers for Armored Core 4 looked nothing short of incredible and yet the first few missions I played were anything but. Many hours later once the single player campaign had been won and the online options exhausted I realized the cold hard truth. Armored Core 4 was rushed and the final retail product is only mildly entertaining. Sure the Mechs move fast and the action is sometimes intense but what does that matter when the meat of the scenarios you’re faced with are short, boring, and so very unpolished.


Yet another short mission.
When you jump into the single player game for the first time you get a fancy cinematic the likes of which you’ll never see again. You are then sent through some of the most basic of training missions which get you up to speed on how to move and shoot in your new Mech, one of which you chose from a wide variety initially available. After that you’re informed that the training mission was “Chapter 1” and that Chapter 2 is underway. You select one of four missions to start with and head into the action. All of these initial missions pretty much just ask you to shoot down a bunch of barely hostile enemies after which you’re given a rank, some money, and you’re sent back to the mission menu to do it all over again in a different location.

After beating a certain number of missions in a chapter, you move on to the next chapter and participate in more difficult missions. By more difficult I mean more things shooting at you. Most missions will only last you between 1 and 5 minutes with the occasional long one that is only long because you can’t really figure out where to go. There are missions where you destroy everything, you escort something, you take out prime targets, you take on a boss mech, and where you just try to survive. These scenarios are ones we’ve all seen before and AC4 does nothing new to invigorate them. In fact I’d go so far as to say they’re some of the blandest and most boring versions of these affairs put in a video game in recent memory.


Mmm filters.
One of the biggest downfalls of AC4’s mission structure is that every single mission takes place inside a box. Sure you’re on decent looking terrain but the edges of the playfield that you can move to are dictated by a red box visible on your radar. Countless times you’ll be on the edge of this stupid box shooting at hostiles that are required to finish the level only to have the annoying voice over woman scream at you to get back into the box. Even worse, if you dare disobey the bitch and stay outside the box for too long it’s mission over and back to menu after a lengthy loading screen.


Extremely odd mission with slowdown.

Then there’s the horrible default button configuration. How in the hell are you supposed to maneuver in 3D with both analog sticks and hit the X or Square button at the same time to shoot? Why the hell isn’t the default for shooting on one of the shoulder buttons!? With the default configuration you’ll move yourself into position, look at the target, let go of the right analog stick to hit the fire button, and then miss because it’s moved out of your way. Well you’ll partially miss seeing as the auto-targeting does a whole lot of the work for you. At least you can change this, but it’s annoying. Then again once you do get firing on the shoulder it’s still tough to use your quick boost and your more powerful boost on the face buttons. This game really needs more shoulder buttons.