”Welcome to the Ark. Your employment as a full-fledged Raven begins today. How you conduct yourself on the field of battle will decide your fate.”

Opening comments like this are something any fan of the Armored Core series will instantly recognize and feel at home with, but as an on/off fan of the franchise, I’ve always loved seeing these kinds of messages as the first email my character receives upon starting a new game – it gives precisely the kind of intense feeling of excitement one would obtain from starting a profitable new business. A profitable new business involving taking your giant robot out and blowing the crap out of anything stupid enough to stand in your way, of course. But what I mean by my being an “on/off fan” of the Armored Core series is that I’ve always loved the concept of the game, not only due to the hot giant robot action, but also because of the complexity and level of customization available. However, an insanely erratic difficulty curve and somewhat unwieldy control scheme (a bit of an understatement, to be sure) has forced me to keep the series at arms length. I’ve beaten the early Armored Core PSX games, and actually came within inches of beating Armored Core 2, but since then I haven’t really paid attention to the series. Hence why this latest contribution to the franchise, Armored Core: Nexus, has aroused my interest so greatly. Would promises of an improved control configuration and a shitload of new content, including modern revamps of old missions and other content on a separate, included disc be enough to get me hot and sweaty at the thought of playing this game? Anxiously ripping the Playstation 2 away from my dear sister, I tore open the game’s packaging to find out.

The Armored Core series has (sadly) never really been known for having an elaborate and detailed storyline, but here’s the basic score as I understand it. The game’s singleplayer campaign takes place on the war-ravaged Earth, in the usual setting where several competing corporations have set up and are vying for superiority, with the major players being groups like Crest, Mirage, Kisaragi, and Navis, all of whom are trying to one-up each other through superior forces, superior technology, or just plain under-handed sneakiness. Each faction has its own military force to use whenever some muscle needs to be presented, but whenever somebody gets serious, a third party is called in to assist in settling disputes. This third party is a highly organized group of mercenaries calling themselves “Ravens”, and it is this group that you just happen to be a fresh member of, so after being provided a brief introduction and a basic AC (“Armored Core”) configuration, it’s time to pick out some contracts and get to work.

The first thing that stuck me about the game is how different the interface feels compared to previous titles. No longer is it just a totally menu / list-driven interface for selecting missions, checking emails and the like, but the game instead adopts a new system that’s a little more friendly in some aspects, and a little less in others. The main campaign screen uses a mouse cursor for navigating the basic interface (manipulated by the D-Pad of course – you don’t need an actual mouse to play, obviously), with an overlay of the world map that has designated hot spots that appear at certain points in the game depending on which missions are available, and selecting one of these marked regions will bring up a list showing which contracts are currently up for the taking. Moving the cursor to the left side of the screen will cause a “Topics” menu to pop out, allowing players to see what emails they’ve received (Green icons indicate personal emails, while red icons are general news reports), and moving over to the right side offers the standard Arena Rankings / AC Configuration / System dialogues. It’s a pretty simple system to grasp, but I liked how easy it made things for choosing where exactly I wanted to go, rather than having to rely on the clunky “spinning wheel” interface most previous AC games have used.

That said, my feelings of elation over the improved interface design were quickly squashed somewhat when I jumped right into the AC hangar to start ricing out my own personal walking war wagon. Just like all the other games in the series, an Armored Core in Nexus is made up of a huge number of different interchangeable parts, so players not only have to concern themselves with the basic head / core / arms / legs of a design, but also need to worry about internal components, such as a fire control system, generator, radiator, and numerous other toys that can enhance or degrade an AC’s performance. Having all these parts with a huge variety of statistics (like “Calorific Value”) is pretty damn cool for hardcore Mecha fans, but newcomers might find the sheer amount of numbers thrown at them a little… overwhelming. Fortunately, at any point during the configuration process the Select button can be pushed to get a nice description on what each value on a given AC part means, so eventually grasping what parts are necessary to transform the piece of junk you start with into your dream mech isn’t too difficult.

As for my complaints regarding the interface, this is one instance where one of the game’s biggest draws also results in a sizable problem. Armored Core: Nexus sports a huge number of different parts, allowing for just about any kind of AC a player can dream of to be constructed. The problem with this is that it can sometimes be very difficult to determine which parts will actually make your AC better because there is no way to directly compare the parts you’re buying with the parts you already have equipped. Aside from a “better / worse” coloring system (that marks the specs of a component red if they’re inferior, or blue if they’re an improvement), there’s no way to get an exact figure on how much of a difference a new part will offer versus the old one unless you either take some notes, or physically buy the part and compare it with the old one side-by-side. This has been an ongoing problem with the game series since its conception, only compounded by the generational adding of dozens upon dozens of new parts with each new game, and I’m really surprised it’s never been resolved yet. Even doing it Front Mission-style by offering a basic numerical figure in brackets of what’s changed in a new part versus the old one would have been a great help, but sadly this has not been done, making modifying and upgrading an AC design a lot more tedious a process than it needs to be.

Of course, this is only a small annoyance in the face of what is ultimately a highly pleasurable experience. A number of changes improve the possibilities for an AC design, including the ability to carry a weapon in both hands and fire them off simultaneously during a mission, and a new and improved “hangar” function. Worried about running out of ammo during a lengthy mission? Fear not; just pick a core that has the “Hangar” function included, then pack in either a left or right weapon (or both, if you have the weight and cash to spare) of small enough size into the new Hangar slot while customizing your AC to put it on standby. Then while playing, just hold down the triangle button in conjunction with R1 or L1 (I’m basing this on the default, new control configuration of course) to drop the current arm weapon and grab the new one from the AC’s internal storage bin. This feature helped by a huge degree over the course of the game, as my psychotic, poorly-aimed shooting sprees commonly resulted in my weapons running dry far sooner than I would have preferred, and having something to fall back on is insanely useful.

There are two other tweaks to the AC tweaking system that I want to touch on before moving on. First, in another really cool move, it is now possible to modify certain parts to push them beyond their standard operating limits. Gone are the days of having to re-think your entire setup just because you’re a mere three points over the weight limit (even though it’s now possible to go into a mission with an overweight AC, albeit with a big penalty). Now, for a cost, players can increase the stats on a given component up to ten times for a slight-to-moderate improvement. These changes could include better cooling efficiency, more power generation, or just better weight allowances, and provides yet another avenue for AC personalization, although I’ve heard some players complain that modified parts can’t be put back to their stock values unless they’re sold and a fresh one is bought. On a slightly more curious note, however, parts will also be flagged as “Used” after they’ve gotten a workout in a mission or two (don’t worry, running a basic AC test does not affect this), which greatly reduces the value they can be sold back at. I guess this was done to reduce the amount of hot-swapping done with various parts in past games – now instead of just selling back parts for a full refund between missions until settling on something that works best for them, players really have to think about what parts they’re buying and what they want to stick with. Combine this with the modification system, and suddenly I found myself having a much more personal attachment to my AC. There’s no need to panic about the changed refund rates on “used” parts though, as the missions in the game dole out more than enough cash to make this a non-issue.

Speaking of contracts, the game’s primary campaign involves a significant number of missions that are presented in a semi-dynamic manner, similar to previous games in the series. While the player is presented with a choice of several missions to accept at many points in the game, most of the time he’ll only be able to accept one or two of them before the game moves on to a new “chapter” and the next set becomes available – so think carefully about which contracts are chosen for your first run through the game. Missions are initially presented with a “briefing”, but only in the loosest sense. A common complaint (of mine, anyways) is that the AC series has always been irritatingly vague on its mission briefings, relying on the player’s foresight, imagination, and a hell of a lot of blind luck to fill in the huge blank spots. As it stands, AC: Nexus hardly improves on the formula, only offering some basic information on who the employer is, how much the player can expect to be paid, what the basic objective is (like “Protect Transport” or “Mop Up Force Remnants”), and that’s about it, aside from a couple of discreet images outlining the mission environment and potential enemies. There’s no map pinpointing areas of interest and offering a more thorough idea of what kind of mission environment the player will be entering, no kind of intelligence information on what kind of enemies or other surprises might be encountered during the mission, and there isn’t even any kind of pre-mission voice over to offer additional information.