Armored Core 4 (Xbox 360)

I'm going to preface this review with a warning: Armored Core 4 killed my first 360. I mean yes, it really just happened to be the game I was playing when the system started suffering heat death - but since the demo months earlier locked up on me...well, I just can't help but wonder. I did keep that particular GameFly rental long enough to play it successfully on my Microsoft-supplied replacement console, so don't think it spells certain doom for you.

This franchise has always held a certain kind of fascination for me. I've never really been that good at it, but big battlin' robots are almost always a good time for at least a few hours. I own Armored Core 2 for the PS2, and while the lack of analog control is sometimes puzzling and always frustrating - it's a solid game. For the fourth installment From Software oddly enough decided to finally pay attention to the traditional and loudest criticism over the franchise; they turned the more simulation-oriented game into an arcade experience. The missions move faster, the action is more shoot-em-up versus strategic movement, and the controls have been loosened up to let you zip all over the place. While hardcore fans immediately cried foul, I cheered. This should have been a slam dunk all the way, a beautiful-looking, fast-paced, Bruckheimer-styled mech game and something I could not wait to play.

Well considering the game is posted here, you can guess how things turned out.

The real tragedy of the whole mess is that it's not a terrible game, it's just completely mediocre and boring. I mean fall-asleep-at-the-controller boring. I can't even snark that much because the game just sits there blandly; I feel as though I can only break its faults down succinctly:

• While the mechs look beautiful, the environments you fight in are unbelievably simple and repetitious. One mission had me fighting in the future equivalent of a parking garage, a square gray room with evenly spaced columns. That's it. Draw distance? I'm not even going to talk about it.
  
• The new mech control scheme is definitely brilliant and supremely enjoyable...but the missions rarely last more than three to five minutes long. What? Why am I even being timed? A little hint - when you pull the plug on something that's just started to get fun, you're doing it wrong.
• It's easy. Way too easy. Add that to the shortness of each individual mission and it's just dull through-and-through.

The only real saving grace of the whole mess is multiplayer - if that's even your thing. (It's certainly not mine, so the game has long been sent back.) You can customize the mechs to a fairly nice degree and go online to fight your friends in arena combat - and since the stupid clock isn't ticking you can actually dig in and enjoy the damn battle.

There's always uncertainty when you monkey with the formula of a successful franchise. It's not unusual for someone to get it right and make a good sequel, but admittedly it's far more common that it stinks to high heaven. Armored Core 4 is one of the rare examples of tinkering the formula into forgettable mediocrity instead.