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Publisher: Agetec
Developer: From Software
Genre: Action
Origin: Japan
Number of Players: 2
Dual Shock: Yes
Peripherals:Memory Card
ESRB: T

There's a vast amount of fun to be had with this game, even if you have to pry it from its grasp some of the time. This is From's best mecha game ever.

Gameplay

Armored Core 2 has dragged its old control scheme into the new generation with it, and we gamers are much poorer for it. On a layer just above gameplay proper, the progression curve occasionally leaps in bizarre directions at times. Every so often, you'll encounter a mission that demands a mech customized for a very specific application - nothing else will do. For example, there's one mission where you have to chase a fleeing cargo vehicle down a long, straight highway. This would be simple, except that the truck is faster than almost any mech you can design, save something with the fastest possible locomotion unit and an extremely efficient booster. In any other case, you'll lose him down the tunnel and have to sit for a moment until the game decides that you've failed the mission. If you don't have the money to kit out your mech appropriately, you simply can't complete that mission.

There are other similarly problematic missions, where you need particular weapons or flight capabilities or extra-heavy armor or what-have-you and you just won't have the money to buy them. It's an irritating obstacle in your progression to encounter, especially if you wash the mission entirely, because the repairs for a destroyed mech will send you into the hole faster than four years worth of student loans.

What this means, basically, is that you'll find yourself starting the game over very often. It's easy, in the early stages, to sink yourself into debt that's too deep to escape. You lose a mission, so you're in the hole, so you can't buy new gear, so you keep failing missions, and so on. Eventually, you'll develop a good enough handle on the earlier missions so that you can build up a cushion in your bank account, and good enough piloting skills to complete a task without destroying your mech in the process (take too much damage and you'll see repair bills eat up all your profits).

And now, if you'll let me make the pun just once, we're at the core of this game, the mecha workshop where you can design and build your ride from the ground up. I do not have a precise figure handy on the number of core parts available in AC2, but I think I can safely say that you will not run out of stuff to try out any time soon. There are arms, legs, bodies, boosters, generators, radar, fire-control systems, and weapons galore to mix and match into thousands of different configurations. Building a mech is simple: you just pick what you like, and react according to the occasional instructions on the game's part (some configurations may be underpowered, overweight, or otherwise unsuitable). Once the whole works is together, you can test it, take it into battle, or customize its appearance, picking one of several different color schemes and even designing your own individual logo.

This is, in case I haven't brought the point home strongly enough, the best part of Armored Core 2, and the reason I'm willing to make time for its other shortcomings. You can build almost anything that you'd want to, and the catalog of parts grows ever larger as you progress through the game, giving you a great incentive to push further into harder and harder missions. That aspect of the plot progression branches like everything else - depending on what missions you take, and which corporate sponsor you happen to ally yourself with, you acquire different parts than what you might pick up by trying a different branch of the mission tree.

Graphics

While the structure of AC2's look is still the same as the earlier Cores, this is the ultra-sharp, 60FPS, steroid-injected successor to those somewhat drab creations. It's not nearly as flashy overall as the Five Star Stories-esque Frame Gride, and the backgrounds are often very utilitarian, but the real stars, the giant robots, have not ever looked better. They're big, smoothly rendered with plenty of polygons, they're detailed, clothed in sharp high-resolution textures, and they shine in the light of From's graphical effects, exploding missiles and glowing energy weapons.

While a number of missions take place in rather empty environments, as I said, you will occasionally come upon a battle that takes place in a genuinely interesting arena. More crowded, urban environments may make getting around a bit of a pain, but you can still enjoy the nicely-designed futuristic cityscapes, and best of all, you can blow up large amounts of the scenery. If your opponent is ducking behind a small enough building, a flight of MIRVs is usually more than enough to destroy his cover and do him some damage. In outdoor environments, meanwhile, whatever you think of the level of detail, the draw distance is always excellent. Most missions are bookended by cinemas that may look a little perfunctory (they're never visual stunners), but they do provide a pleasant lead-in to the action proper. Every so often you're also treated to a dash of pre-rendered FMV, which looks absolutely lovely - just like the introduction, which rivals the classic Gun Griffon movies.

Sound

From the rattle of shoulder-mounted Gatlings to the whoosh of a flight of missiles taking off, AC2's sound effects do a great job of conveying the impact of weapons and movement. The measured stomp-stomp-stomp of legged mecha or the whoosh of hover-equipped cores, meanwhile, calmly marks the time during missions.

What deserves the most respect out of AC2's audio elements, though, is the voice acting, curiously enough. Agetec has done a remarkably good localization job, which is the last thing I would have expected from them, given how small they seem to be. They're aided, no doubt, by the lack of lips to synch any of their voices to, but that doesn't take anything away from the quality of their work. The corporate fixers who dole out your missions are suitably officious, sleazy, or chirpily helpful, while fellow Ravens speak in gruff, clipped tones like the hard-bitten old mercenaries that they are.