Armored Core: for Answer

       I rented Armored Core: for Answer because I was interested in rehashing my love of the mech genre. Armored Core delivered on its promise of painfully vast amounts of customizable robots and robot parts, while also creating some of the more challenging moments I've experienced in games of this generation. Unfortunately Armored Core: for Answer also opens up old wounds by showing how little mech games have progressed, and how Armored Core may be all of whats left in the dying genre.

      Aside from the Mechwarrior games, which now may be defunct after the IP was given to new studio Smith and Tinker, Armored Core games seemed to be the only mech games that consistently released new titles for each generation of consoles. This newest addition to the franchise is the first one that I've ever played, save for a demo of AC4 that left me overwhelmed with the controls compared to other games, and rightfully so. The barrier of entry for the franchise is as thick as lead. Besides a tutorial in the beginning of the campaign, the game doesn't explain any of it's features in-game. This left me scratching my head at what "Stabilizers" do, why I couldn't "Tune" my robot from the off-set, and how generators, side boosters, stored weapons, and assault weapons worked, just to name a few. To some degree I can understand, because explaining the functionality of all of these parts of your robot would leave the player lost in a sea of tutorials. Instead I found myself slapping on a new weapon or part and finding out what worked and what didn't through initial phases of trial and error.

      The customization in the mech genre of video games has always been ridiculously thorough, but also allowed the player breathing room, and allowing for mistakes to be made in the customization process. Armored Core has the same perverse obsession with detail in robot customization, and the compulsion to build the perfect robot is still alive and thriving within me in 2008. This impeccable super-robot is impossible to achieve but the game lets you waste as much money on new robot parts as you'd like to reach this dream. For Answer is forgiving when it comes to mistakes in customization, however, allowing you to rework tuning adjustments, and sell back robot parts for full-price. Money never is an issue in the game either, since most mission reward you ample amounts of cash to buy what you want and then some. The game also has a "Design" option which lets you save robot configurations, and use configurations of robots you've defeated in battles. These blueprints for robots usually stack up with a fat "Missing Parts" sign next to all of them, but if you've committed enough to the game, and beat it twice, all of the robot components become unlocked, allowing for your brain to run wild with whatever parts the game has to offer and use all of the blueprints.

      The campaign, however, is no easy task. The game starts you out with a selection screen for a default robot, none of which are particularly more powerful than the next, and your selection has no impact on the story. Your first missions are simple, and really only serve as tutorials and means of making some money to start building your robot. The games difficulty ramps up at the conclusion of the first chapter, however, when you face your first of many Arms Forts, the games equivalent of a boss fight. Arms Forts, for the most part, are crushingly difficult to destroy. They are massive metal behemoths that come in all shapes and sizes, from rocket propelled battleships thrice your size to hundred story high missile batteries. This is where the customization in the game becomes the deciding factor in how hard or how easy a battle will be, to the point where I went through fifteen different designs to fight the final Arms Fort in the game. Needless to say, the game does reward you heavily for these missions; an achievement and a huge chunk of money. Unfortunately, many of the basic missions at the beginning of every chapter are simple and boring, and are too quick to pay any real attention to strategy besides simply barreling through enemies until the lady's voice in your head says "Mission Complete". The game does have a story, but it is far from your main motivation for continuing through the story.

      The graphics in Armored Core are the biggest disappointment in the game, although it is easy to overlook the painfully clear problems the game has when it comes to enjoying For Answer. The models for the robots are impressive, and offer the most detail you'll see anywhere else in the game, with each weapon and body part looking equally interesting and intriguing as the next. The water effects, and particle effects for the robots are well done as well. The games problems lie within everything else. The larger Arms Forts you fight lack any detail when  you get right next to them, which you often are while fighting them. The environments consist of large open expanses, with the inclusion of a few crudely modeled buildings, or hills and extrusions out of the ground. The textures used are bland, and any real differences in the environments -- which include either the sky, a desert, the ocean, a highway, or a barren snowy wasteland -- are lost on the player because they are so hard to notice. An argument could be made that the environments can't be crowded to allow for your robot to fly around with less constrictions, and that textures are bland because in comparison to the your size in the world, including detail on a building just as big as you are would be overlooked. These are hard not to notice, however, and if as much care went into crafting beautiful environments for your beautiful robots to fly around in, this genre would be well on its way to a full recovery. Worth noting too is the outdated explosions, which are nothing more than 2-D images expanding and then disappearing, similar to what would be seen in, say, Goldeneye for the N64.

     Controlling your robot within the game is fairly easy, with the controls mapped to sensible buttons, although some options had to be mapped to several button presses at once, such as the use of Assault Armor which requires you to press B, Y, and the Right Bumper at the same time. I didn't experience any glitches while playing through the game, and never felt I was being unfairly killed by the game during a mission.

     The game does offer multiplayer but finding a game is more of a challenge then it's worth. The only people playing online anyways are the people ranked in the top 30s, nobody is really fair game, and you will simply act as fodder for their goal of reaching that ten thousand wins achievement that some people are actually strangely close to. The people who are playing, by the way, are mostly Japanese. I did get into a player match with some fellow 'mericans, however, and found the online to be pretty fun when you've got two teams of four, everyone with their own custom robot, duking it out. The game has potential for a good online community, too, with full leaderboards, the ability to reconfigure your robot in the game lobby, and trade schematics. The sad truth of the matter, though, is that there are only upwards of 400 people who have played the game online, and far less playing it as I'm writing this review.

      Armored Core: for Answer, is without a doubt a fun, and challenging game. The real challenge the developers have to face is not committing the franchise to die-hard fans, and mech genre enthusiasts. The customization aspects of games like Armored Core are still as compelling as ever for me, and the game is as fast-paced as I'd want a robot fighting game to be. From what I can tell this game didn't sell well in the U.S., however, so I can't see Ubisoft having much incentive to keep this franchise alive, unless the next Armored Core really takes the genre in a new direction, or simply makes it prettier.