I was always very fond of the Armored Core series, all the way back to its original iteration back on the Playstation one.  And as it continued, through its good times and its bad times, I kept up with it, generally enjoying what it had to offer but never quite as much as I did the original.

And when I finally managed to lay hands on Armored Core 4 on my Xbox 360, I began to wonder—was this it?  Would this be the one that managed to restoke my ardor for the series that had begun to flag in recent years?  Could this be the giant mech game to end them all?

The answer to that question, sadly, is no…but Armored Core 4 will really not be all that big a disappointment.  It’s better than anyone probably expected, and probably better than it really has any right to be, being this far into the series.

The world is a much smaller place in Armored Core 4, with global food and energy supplies stretched to their utmost thanks in large part to a massive surge in population that went on for several years.  The gap between the haves and the have-nots widened impossibly as there were so many more have-nots than ever before in human history.  Naturally, a whole lot of have-nots results in a really, really torqued underclass, and that means civil unrest.  So much so, in fact, that the traditional concept of nations falls apart, and what rises to replace them?  Why, none other than our good friend the multinational corporation, who steps in with private armies and mercenaries to protect their property.  When chunks of the underclass decide they’d rather be protected than killed for whatever scraps of scraps they have left, they end up becoming essentially slaves to the corporations and their wealthy few owners as they trade their freedom for peace, safety and food.

From there, the corporations expand their holdings and their mercenary armies to include the Armored Cores, like the one you’ll be piloting.

Yeah, I know, not exactly a candidate for feel-good plotline of the year, but if you take out the giant battle mechs and dial the plot back to, say, Next Sunday A.D., you might be looking at something downright plausible.  And plausibility in a video game plot is always a welcome wrinkle.

I may have put way too high of expectations on this sucker to begin with, folks—I was expecting it to be as big as the original which we’d never seen before, but what I got was an experience that was actually very similar to the original, just with ramped up graphics.  I still had the ability to juggle parts and reattach them to my mech.  The controls are actually pretty smooth, and the game’s pace is almost shockingly fast.  More than once I’d discovered that I’d finished a mission when I was still wondering what I was supposed to do. The action has to be pretty fast and furious when you’re done before you even fully realize you started. I love the fact that there’s a wide variety of weapons involved, and plenty of parts to trick out your Armored Core, or AC as they’re most often called.

However, difficulty will start ramping up surprisingly quickly, and the garage system wasn’t exactly the most intuitive of the series.  For some reason I had a tough time figuring out how much parts cost and how much money I had.  Weird, I know, but still.

Basically, Armored Core 4 is a worthy, if flawed successor to the original and a high-quality part of the series.  If you love giant robots then this game is all for you, but plenty of lower-grade sci-fi buffs will still manage to find plenty to like.