Your Core doesn't look much better either in the horribly interlaced, flickery, jagged graphics engine. The PSP version of Armored Core Formula Front looks much nicer than this does. It just looks awful considering this is a new PS2 title released in 2006, with the only saving grace of a rather satisfying explosion particle effect system. The sound effects aren't much better than the graphics either, with the same sounds from all the other Armored Core games endlessly regurgitated from your speakers, slightly muffled by unexciting ambient music in the background.

However, graphics do not a good game make.

The classic Armored Core seek and destroy game play is still evident in Nine Breaker. The brilliant AI system and difficulty curves usually present are not. For some strange reason one minute you can be fighting an Uber-Super-Duper machine that seems to anticipate your every move, and the next minute you can be pitted up against a machine so dense that it doesn't actually return fire and instead decides to run into walls! Some of the robots you fight against make a dustbin look like a prime candidate for MENSA, which really renders all those hours of tweaking, testing, and practicing totally and utterly useless and shifts the determination of whether you win or lose the match down to whether you get a clever opponent or an idiotic one.

In two-player mode, though, all sins can be forgiven. It's great fun going against a human opponent with two prized Core machines that you've both painstakingly created from scratch. It's a shame that the network and online modes were cut from the UK and USA versions of the game, because I think Nine Breaker would be one of the few games on the system really able to enhance game play with an online tournament game mode.

As it stands, Armored Core Nine Breaker is a reasonable game, but not one I can really recommend due to the fact that the earlier games in the series were more involving, more interesting, better looking, had more options and were far better balanced then this one. Fans of the AC games will probably love it, but any new recruits looking to jump into the world of warring robots would be better off looking towards Armored Core 3, Armored Core Nexus, or Armored Core Formula Front on the PSP. This one really feels like it's a step backwards from its predecessors.

Armored Core Nine Breaker is released on May 5th at a price point of £19.99.

Armored Core Nine Breaker is rated 12+ by the PEGI for depictions of robotic violence

Armored Core Nine Breaker is rated T (Teen) by the ESRB for Fantasy Violence.