Part 24: Bonus Sortie - Multiplayer

Bonus Sortie - Multiplayer

...The hell do you mean we're not done? I said this was over with like three times by now. This is bullshit.

Well, that's because Another Age actually has eight more missions, tucked away on the start screen under VS MISSION!



See, FromSoft, in their urge to try and cram as much content into the game as possible, included a handful of cooperative and PVP missions. Of course, this being Another Age, they are all one-for-one recreations of missions that are already in the game, just tweaked slightly to include a second AC, either on your side or as part of the opposing forces. Unfortunately these missions aren't particularly interesting, and only having one controller puts a damper on any cooperative funtimes. But nonetheless, the missions allow you to load your save data and bring your own AC to the fight, and save whatever credits you win straight to your card and take it home, which was pretty damn cool back in those old halcyon days of 2001.

However, they did at least include some fully voiced briefings, which change depending on which side you're working for, which is a nice little touch of effort given how much they phoned in otherwise.

The most fun thing about Another Age's VS Missions though is that there is no such thing as IFF. If you want to go ahead and sabotage your friend in a cooperative mission to get a bigger reward, you totally can. Want to cut in on the arena fight he's having with another AC to help or harm him? Go nuts, just make sure you yourself don't aggro the opposition. And that, more than anything else I've seen in this series, truly embodies the spirit of Armored Core. The spirit of wanton greed, self-interest, and gleeful destruction.

And finally there's the VS mode proper. For the most part, this is just a collection of a dozen or so areas from AC2's Arena and some Another Age mission areas to round it out a bit. However, there are four areas we have yet to see or visit in any capacity, so let's do a quick rundown for posterity's sake.


Sluice Gate
A semi-submerged water area, with a large central mechanism that has a number of areas to take cover and fire from or recover behind. Great if you're into enclosed melee fights or a fan of watching water effects melt a PS2.


Emeraude Carrier
A very small, open air floating platform, perfect for fights where you want ringouts to be an actual threat. Or you're a hover leg user and you really want to lose friends.


Orbital Ring
A large, open space arena. In space. Has a lot of hiding holes to play whack a mole with, and is appropriate for making incredibly obvious Halo jokes.


Abyss
A huge, flat, enclosed area, with weird pylons jutting in and out of the walls. Perfect for your honorable robo-bushido duels or for naming your overlong LP thread after an obscure multiplayer stage in a little known game just to make a Dark Souls expansion reference.

But there we go. Now we have truly covered everything Another Age could possibly offer. Once again I'd like to thank everyone for sticking around and watching and commenting, it's been great, and I'll see you all for the next go-round.

And a special thanks goes out to all my co-commentators, I hope to have each and every one of you onboard once again for the next adventure into crushing corporate nihilism and human rights violations:


nine-gear crow
GOTTA STAY FAI
motoh
JamieTheD
ArclightBorealis
ModeWondershot
Blastinus
MithosKuu
Seiren
Rafza
CJacobs
Zorak
Cirvante


And our final point totals for the Giant Robot Reference Powerhour:

Stormgear - 3
Spark That Bled - 2
Rigged Death Trap - 2
Big Scary Owl - 1
Ashsaber - 1
Feldherren - 1
Polaron - 1
Televisio Frankus - 1
StarFyter - 1


And coming in on top with a grand total of six points is dis astranagant. Please submit your wishes for a forums upgrade or avatar, and I will hook you up with your prize. And a big thanks for everyone else who participated in helping make the tail end of Another Age just a bit more interesting.