It doesn't take you long to realise that AC3 is all about earning cash in order to upgrade your AC as soon as possible. The basic AC that you start off with is a clunky, slow moving and poorly armed tin can that'll get you through the first few missions and arena matches, but no more. You get ranked and awarded accordingly at the end of each mission and it's then that it really hits you how much finance plays a part in the game - you even have to pay for any projectile ammo used!

   

AC3 is played from a third person viewpoint (sadly still no cockpit view), and the control system feels the same as the earlier games; backward/forward & turning is done with the left stick and strafing is mapped to the L1/R1 buttons. This works fine, but as every other game seems to have settled with the left stick = movement, right stick = look type setup, you wonder why the FromSoftware think this old, less accurate method is better. And although you can reassign virtually every other function in the button setup menu, there's no option to use the right stick.

As you progress you get offered various missions dotted around the city in varied locations, but it's all rather linear with few real choices to be made, and sadly whilst the game engine seems to allow for plenty of detail on the ACs (the mechs) themselves, you don't get much in the scenery department - with flat, repetitive textures everywhere. Many levels are bland and have a poor draw distance, and if you stray too far from the intended path it's annoyingly easy to fail a mission. Some areas have destructible features but there's nothing like the realism or feeling of scale and mass destruction that say, Mechassault on the Xbox allows. AC3 feels and looks a lot like a more mechanical Zone of the Enders, but rarely supplies the lightning fast action of that game or the dazzling graphical effects. That's not to say that the game is all slow and ugly, far from it in fact - there are some really nice weapon trails and explosions. But it takes you a long time and many missions to earn enough cash to upgrade your AC to the point where it feels fast, powerful and nimble, and although your garage has space for 3 ACs, for quite a while you'll most likely find yourself butchering any spare parts in order to finance the upgrades for your main one - the money situation is that tight in AC3…

   

Arena bouts offer a nice departure from the main missions and you can win prize money and new parts as you climb the league. The two player versus mode will also provide a bit of fun - but you really need two evenly matched mech-heads in order to enjoy this fully. With the huge increase in co-operative options in games it's a shame that AC3 didn't get one - it would have been an absolute delight to play this with a team mate. However, I was a fan of Armored Core on the Playstation, and I can't help liking this game too. The massive number of different parts, whether they're weapons, engines, radar setups, heads, arms, legs (this includes the option for tracked or hovering ACs)… means that no two ACs are likely to be exactly the same. As with the two previous Armored Cores you can customise your mech right down to what colour it is and even design your own emblem (although this is still so small that you can hardly see it, even during the arena replays).

Armored Core 3 will no doubt feel like mana from heaven for fans of the series, but is unlikely to win many new fans with its average graphics and aged controls. The game's unfortunate fixation with finance (you feel like a money-grubbing pawn for much of the game) and the fact that you have to work hard and long to get a decent AC will also put off the casual mech driver out there.