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| My Armored Core Nexus recollections by Mischief Maker 07/01/2009, 9:20am PDT | ||||
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| I remember being really really excited by the promise of customizable high speed jetpack robots blasting the shit out of each other, then being disappointed, then bored, then trading the disc.
I will give one thing to From Software, whoever does their CGI intros makes some really kickass movies. Though Nexus' scene of over the top violence in the rain is accompanied by an incredibly inappropriate boppy onomatopoeia song. There's also a cutscene where a bug gets stepped on by a footsoldier who then gets stepped on by a giant robot, so it's deep and arty and shit and stupud gaijins wouldn't understand the hidden meaning. Playing this game gave me some flashbacks to System Shock 2 and Deus Ex with RPG elements shoehorned into an action game by adding "virtual incompetence" that fucks up your aim and movement to reflect your low skill level. Only by maximizing your stats do you finally get the game to control like a below-average FPS. In Armored Core, the analog mouselook does not aim your guns, but instead moves a big square, and when enemies are within the square, your weapons slowly lock onto them, depending on the quality of your targeting system. RPG bullshit aside, it's one of those Virtual-On esque games where you get a "fast" dash that will let you avoid enemy fire, but at the end of your dash you're immobile for a split second, opening the door to being hit by your opponent if they react quickly enough. While Nexus has all kinds of bonus missions from previous entries in the series redone in the new engine, it's still designed as a one-on-one multiplayer deathmatch game and fails as a singleplayer entry. While the generic "MT" enemies may be slow and clumsy, their failure to be as complex as a core also means that several anti-core strategies don't work against them. Did you custom build a fire-weapon core to cripple your opponent with overheating? Fuck you, MTs don't have heat mechanics. Do you carry a supersuper weapon with a limited number of shots? Fuck you, here are 20 enemies spread out over these various dark rooms and corridors. Go rebuild the "correct" type of robot for this mission. When you do face AI cores they cheat like mad, flying through the air and rapid firing high heat explosive weapons like it's nothing. The customization is a headache. Instead of being like battletech, where it's pretty much stuffing your tonnage with as much weaponry as you can, this works more like Gran Tourismo. Match weight, power requirements, cooling, armor, and a zillion other inter-dependent stats. Then tune the parts! Fuck it up, (and you will fuck it up) and you get a crippled mech. This was the only video game I ever bought the strategy guide for and it still didn't help. This is customization you do on paper with a calculator in hand before you even think of turning on the PS2. No dicking around in this game's customization, mister! And the plot is crap. It's the post-apocalyptic future and evil corporations rule the world and make war on one another and perform evil supersoldier experiments and oh shit the supersoldiers broke loose and blah blah blah. It's even more dull in play than it sounds on paper because a large amount of the game takes place in a tiny city located inside a giant metal box to protect against bombardment, which just results in exceptionally dark and dreary city levels. The most urgent and emotional part of the plot occurs when you discover an armored core pilot who doesn't belong to your mercenary guild and your supervisor flips out. Then in the end someone accidentally sets off an ancient superweapon and millions of tiny penis-shaped missiles fly out and destroy the world. So it's boring and ends on a "fuck you" note for the player. Lots of people on the net say the game is totally awesome as a multiplayer game, you just have to get two seperate TVs, two seperate PS2s, two seperate copies of the game, and connection cables. Is that too much of an entry fee for one-on-one FPS deathmatch? I think so. Phantom Crash and S.L.A.I. do everything this game series does, only better and not taking itself so goddamn seriously. |
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