kuraine

a pixelated entity

  • she/her

idk some girl or cat or panda that does music


πŸ₯ twitter
twitter.com/kuraine
🎹 radical dreamland (studio)
radicaldream.land/
πŸ•οΈ bandcamp
radicaldreamland.bandcamp.com/
☁️ soundcloud
soundcloud.com/lena-raine
πŸ˜‡ ANOTHEREAL (new dev blog home)
blog.radicaldream.land/blog/?q=ANOTHEREAL
πŸ”Έ Dispatch from the Radical Dreamland
blog.radicaldream.land/

ok admission time: this is my first armored core game

not that i've never like.... been in the presence of one, or felt the influence of them, but my admiration of from software's particular brand of game design only came about after demon's souls introduced me to their games & their style became fully entrenched

when the armored core series was releasing, i was in the arcades playing virtual on, killing god in xenogears, doing insane dashes with jehuty in zone of the enders, xenosaga'ing it up... so it's not like i WASN'T enjoying mechs at the time, we just didn't collide at that particular moment of time. and so now, in the vast desert of speedy mech games (with only things like daemon x machina to give us food), i've finally made contact

spoilers & thoughts beyond the jump


from the initial impression the game revealed with, all the way to its title screen, armored core vi is one drenched in its tone: bleak, rusted, broken people climbing into the ACs time and time again to make enough to keep living. alliances are for one mission only, and who knows what the next one will bring. if you're lucky you'll get hired on at an in-house merc team, but even then, the higher ups don't care. you're just a body. large, metallic, filled with whatever the augmentation technology of the moment has managed to cough out.

as one such regurgitated mass, you're stuffed into a salvaged body and take another's call sign. you choose this name. someone else's. but it becomes you, you become it, or somewhere in between. you're split between the hand who holds your leash--a loving hand, who makes sure people respect your power, yet still holds that leash--and a voice, a representative of the fuel-like beings that it is your job to find. you never speak, but it is clear you have spoken. you're spoken to, a lot. got a job for you. this corp or another, working for subsidiaries passing down nails for your hammer to hit. even the ones that fight back just pass down more nails. you're the hammer. it's up to you to drive it in. hold it all shut. charge up one more attack.

it's so much constant backstabbing that when one voice cuts through the noise and bravado, and declares that you're war buddies now, it's hard not to listen. it's a presence that is felt in your first major skirmish against a powerful foe. the game gives you something: a friend. this isn't a souls game. even in those bleak worlds, you can still summon friends. no such luck on rubicon 3. but rusty arrives, skidded metal feet on metal floor, and helps hold you up.

i could go on to recount the entire arc of the game and its three endings, but it really is worth experiencing first-hand. by the time i was in new game ++ (the 3rd time thru the game), i had memorized all the briefings, all the catchy lines. it became second nature. so when things do change, you notice them. and the feeling of having a familiar story gradually blossom into something new is a fascinating thing. not even yoko taro games do this, not really. you'll get a new game + and maybe a new layer is revealed to you, or now it's a totally different story. but in ac6, you get to experience the ramifications of small adjustments. you see the (moonlight) butterfly effect. one choice in a chapter 1 mission barrels out of control, twisting the results, even beyond your major telegraphed route differences. it all comes around. even the arena fights, a series staple, turned into something even more significant than fighting the big names in the story. it's simulated. that has purpose. everything means something, and every small thing you do in the loop of the game adds up.

it's the differences that make a moment like fighting your best friend in a duel to the death release into exhilaration at reconciling that drive and teaming up to take on the world (or maybe you did it in the other order). the tragic knowledge that each path might lead to a confrontation with one outstretched hand. you only have one; the other was blown off. but you need to choose and take one.

or maybe you're coming back around for one final time... finding a way out, only to push forward one more time. past the last remaining humanity in a broken man, holding on to consciousness in a husk well past death. taking the future of rubicon into your own hands, and finding a new way forward.

it's hard to not talk about it in an evocative way. there are literal ways of interpreting the story & gameplay. it's a linear set of missions. sometimes you choose which order you do them in. sometimes you choose which one to do. but its sparsenss inspires me to reflect on it in all the metaphor it's driving at high speeds, assault boosting directly into my brain. the music isn't straight-forward. it's never just an all-out banger. it lurches, it shambles, it isn't mixed to a sheen. the singing is mush-mouthed and raw, there's distortion, pitch-shifted synths that can never settle on a single note, verging into atonality. it's a gorgeous, evocative space to be in, and it's hard to leave even after 70 hours of mission after mission after high-paced duel and failure and failure and failure and failure and failure and--3 days later--victory, screaming, launching out of my chair.

it's a lot to think about. but overall the feeling of playing the game and the mood it's inspired in me really brings it up to one of my new favorites. i hope to keep coming back to it. i hope the game is successful enough to revitalize the need for more games like this. both armored core the series, as well as others that are dormant.

entering combat mode


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @kuraine's post:

It's so nice when a game comes along and just blows apart one's expectations. I hadn't properly played an AC game since Another Age and I'm only vaguely familiar with the games since from youtube overviews. But AC6... It really surprised me. I was hoping for a cool mech game with some fun builds and customization, but to get some truly memorable characters, an epic soundtrack which just burns the veins, and so many great lines ranging from Rusty's shots at the Ice Worm to Raven's handler wondering how far you can fly on "borrowed wings". It's just all so good.

And special mention to Chatty Stick. They're right up there with Rusty for me.