Armored Core: Nexus is the 8th installment in the series, and is certainly one of the better ones.
User Rating: 9 | Armored Core: Nexus PS2
The original Armored Core games were on the ps1 and were well known for their customizability. Nexus, is perhaps the most indepth game there is, coming with a loosely based storyline on one DVD (roughly 50 area participants and 60-75 missions), and about 100 missions (plus concept art and other extras) on the other DVD. For those who have played The AC series before and enjoyed it, this is a definite buy. From the first DVD, you can probably get 25-35 hours of gameplay. The second DVD will also add another 20-30 hours of game play. For those who are unfamiliar with the AC games, this might be the time to jump in, one reason being that the difficulty isn't as hard as it used to be, and the other being that while in past games the weapon firing and controls were used through face buttons and the direction buttons, Nexus uses FPS controls to make it easier to adapt to the game. Like always, half the fun of the game is in designing your robot, with From Software claiming that there are over 1 million diffrent combinations (which certainly could be true, with there being approximately 450 parts throughout the game). However, there is a fairly steep learning curve to this game, and will take somewhere around 2 hours to grasp the basics and begin to understand how the cores work. As i said before, this game allows for far more customizing then any other game that comes to mind, including its predecessors. While all the types of weapons and parts and optional parts have been around for quite some time in the series, the developers have taken the liberty to add "enhancements" (or leveling up) to individual parts. For example, if a laser gun is, lets say, 800 pounds, and uses up more enegy than you like, you can pay some extra money to drop the weight 50 or a hundred pounds, and cut the energy consumption down by 10 or 15 percent (There are 5 diffrent things you can level up for the parts, and there are probably several hundred cominations to leveling up the parts themselves, adding to the depth even more.), making it more suitable to your tastes. The two low points throughout the game are the graphics (which are almost exactly the same as Armored Core 2, a lauch title for the PS2; on a diffrent note, some of the pre-rendered cut scenes tend to be breath taking) and the sounds ( a highly repetitve techno background music, which will wear on your nerves a bit before you learn to ignore it . The sound effects, while sufficient, really aren't loud enough nor give you the feel that your in a bad-ass twelve ton robot that can blow apart entire buildings easily). The background and areas are for the most part extremely bland (surely some of it purposely so, seeing as how it's usually difficult to see details in the ground while your several hundred feet up). The Cores themselves look very defined and varied, and most people would prefer to have lower-res backgrounds if it means better looking avatars, myself included. The sounds, while somewhat varied, rarely does its job of setting the mood when your at night and suposed to go unnoticed, or when your near death fending off an insurmountable amount of enemies. Its a shame that there are few (if any) moments in the game when there isn't ant music playing, because thats when you get most into the role. The two views are third person and first person, the latter new to the series (though it could be accessed through codes in all the previous games). First person doesn't really seem natural, more akin to a camera strapped to the forefront of the mech as opposed to an actual person, so you'll probably be better off using the third person view. There is multiplayer, and while it doesn't have the customizable arena that Silent Line did (my favorite thing throughout the entire series), it still is fun to go against another person, and i still firmly believe that if there is ever a online service for a future ps2 AC game (there will undoubtly be one for the next gen consoles), than it will easily become the best thing for online for any console (there are rumors that last raven will have online). All in all, a very fun game, one especially worth buying, or at the very least renting. While they do nothing to add to their audience (other than the FPS controls), it seems as though they are on the right track, and if they ever update the graphics and change the music, i wouldn't put it was the coming games to become big hits.
