Armored Core 5 - Why I'm Excited

Being a fan of the Armored Core series it's always good to hear that they are making another one.  There aren't enough games these days about giant robots with giant weapons destroying each other.  Armored Core: For Answer was a step in the right direction for the series and probably my favorite one so far.  It added a little more personality to the story, epic boss fights, and some nice gameplay tweaks and changes.  If you haven't already checked it out yet, watch this gameplay footage, and then go out and buy it.


Armored Core 5 from what I've seen is looking really good.  It's adding a lot of dramatic changes to the series, and I think for the better.  The mechs in AC5 are built smaller, they are now around 5 meters instead of 10.  They also look a bit more like machines of death and less like they are from an anime.  The AC games have always been somewhat based on reality.  I know giant robots aren't exactly realistic, but the AC games being extremely detailed in all of their specs it almost makes you believe they could be real.

Little mechs big explosions!

Since they aren't real I wouldn't mind the series going in a more action style direction.  I would also like the mechs to have more variety and personality to them.  Of course it should still keep it's depth in the customization of the mechs and have tons of different parts.  I just wouldn't mind if it played a bit faster like Zone of the Enders.  While I don't think AC5 will play as fast as ZOE I can tell that it will play faster than previous AC games.

Having the smaller mechs and bigger environments in AC5 is going to add more strategy to the fights.  You'll be able to hide behind cover and launch sneak attacks.  That will make the people that use blades really happy to hear.  It was always hard to get the jump on other mechs with melee without getting shot at a few times.

The producer for AC5 Toshifumi Nabeshima has said for the online mode there will be a variety of things besides combat.  I'm not exactly sure what he has in mind but it sounds interesting.  I just hope it has your standard deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, and capture territories variations.  Team deathmatch should be extremely fun  4 vs 4 with friends and your custom built mechs sounds like a blast.


Another thing that Nabeshima mentioned but didn't go into much detail was about an "over weapon system" that could potentially one shot another mech.  The possibilities for that has me excited giving the mechs super moves sounds awesome.  I wonder how many different ones there will be and if they are mech or weapon specific.  It just makes me think about what other surprises are in store for this game.

Not much else is know about AC5 at the moment, but more info should be revealed soon.  AC5 originally had a 2010 release and now it's slated for early 2011.  It's developed by From Software for release in Japan and no official announcement has been made for a Western release.  It has a really good chance of being released for the West, I'll be keeping my eye out for you.  Let me know what you guys think, are you excited for it too?