Here's Namco Bandai's community manager Rich Bantegui to walk you through the various multiplayer elements of Armored Core 5. In addition to combat and the new "operator" role, you now have ways to update and edit your team from specs to emblem -- just the thing for mechheads looking for a fix.
If you surprised yourself by becoming a superfan of Dark Souls, here's the next ... totally different From Software-developed game for you to try. Publisher Namco Bandai announced that mech action game Armored Core 5 will be released on PS3 and Xbox 360 in North America on March 20 -- which just happens to be five years to the day after Armored Core 4 came out. A European release will follow on March 23.
If you pre-order from GameStop, you'll get some extra stuff with which to outfit your giant robot: the "Heavy Assault Pack," which comes with extra weapons and parts. This stuff can be used in the competitive multiplayer, which would seem to give an advantage to GameStop buyers on release day. That hardly seems sporting.
Originally planned for an October 20 launch in Japan, From Software's Armored Core V won't meet its scheduled date. The developer has announced the game has been pushed back until January 2012, following feedback from users who participated in a closed online beta recently.
We've contacted Namco for clarification and to see how this news affects the launch here in the US. The good news, though, is that mech oil doesn't ever go bad, so you don't have to throw out that stockpile you've got going in your garage.
Talk about not a moment too soon! Here we were in an utter panic about what we'd wear this Halloween (we were torn between Ghostsama bin Laden and Green Lantern) when our answer comes direct from the new issue of Famitsu -- albeit via Andriasang.
Armored Core 5 is arriving in Japan in October, according to the mag, which should give us plenty of time to pick a robot costume, cobbled together from cardboard boxes and colored tinfoil. Plus, considering the game won't come to North America until early 2012, think how avant garde we'll seem!
There's apparently even going to be a closed beta for the game just prior to the Japanese launch. We can only hope we get some invites stateside, so we get an inkling of what foil colors to stock up on.
We had to dust off deep, dark portions of our brain to even remember that Armored Core 5 was a thing that existed -- however, with a new batch of gameplay info fresh from Famitsu (via Andriasang), we now doubt we'll be able to forget it. Producer Toshifumi Nabeshima has detailed the game's new team-based, online multiplayer focus, which sees four-player teams struggling to claim, control and protect territories on a battlefield. This sounds like standard stuff, until you factor in the other players, each an "operator" for one of the teams, watching the action from a special map screen and coordinating strategies.
The goal, as Nabeshima explained it, is to have the game's online mode be a seamless, persistent extension of the single-player campaign -- for instance, teams will have to set up defenses, such as turrets, in their controlled territories to protect them from attackers while they're offline. Piled on top of the series' ever-savory mech-building formula, these multiplayer features have officially sent our interest in Armored Core 5 into the stratosphere.
Check out Andriasang for even more details about the game's new co-operative focus.
We're nearing the end of 2010, and with it comes not only the sweet sounds and scents of the holidays, but the yearly retreat of a few popular game titles to the next calendar year. Armored Core 5 is the latest game to join the migration -- a big announcement last January promised the game in 2010, but Famitsu is now reporting that From Software has pushed the date into early 2011.
Mech enthusiasts with their calendars marked might be disappointed, but the news shouldn't overheat anyone else's thrusters, as we've already almost got more games to play this holiday season than seems necessary.
As usual, Famitsu scans have beaten official sources to the punch, with scans of the magazine's reveal of Armored Core 5 now online. The article reveals that AC5 is a PS3/360 game, built, according to Siliconera, on the concept of "mayhem-like mecha action."
The "mayhem" is the result of the new "more complicated" three-dimensional stages, featuring many different heights from which to attack. These stages will be populated by smaller mechs -- the robots will come in at around five meters tall, instead of ten as in previous Cores. The smaller mechs will be more maneuverable, according to Andriasang's summary of the article, and able to traverse smaller areas of the environments, and even hide in some corners.
From Software has been on a roll lately, with the hit Demon's Souls and the well-received 3D Dot Game Heroes. But what of the franchise that people most closely associate with From Software (among people who associate From Software with things) -- Armored Core?
At an Armored Core Silent Line Portable tournament in Tokyo, From Software dated the PSP version of Armored Core: Last Raven for March 4, and (more excitingly) announced a brand-new entry in the mech series, Armored Core 5. No details of the sequel were revealed beyond a release date, though the new AC5 site suggests that more information will be forthcoming January 14 (or when the Famitsu leaks hit). Mysteriously, clicking the big "5" on the site links to a Google search for the word "senjou," which means "battlefield." You mean there's going to be fighting in this mech combat game?
Update: Reader Kenoji has pointed us to some off-screen footage of the teaser trailer shown after the event. It's posted after the break.
