After an 11 year absence, the Armored Core series jet-boosts back into action with Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon. And, given the huge success of Elden Ring last year, there is now of course heightened interest in developer From Software’s output, regardless of what form it takes. Armored Core 6 is a completely different beast in game design to the studio’s more recognised series of course, and so the question is this: has the technology evolved to a sufficient degree that the game overcomes the technical issues we saw with Elden Ring?
The truth is that despite its different, mission-based game structure, Armored Core 6 does still share its technical DNA with Elden Ring, in that it uses the same engine. Based on Tweets from modder Lance McDonald, it’s the same From Software technology, though put to work on a wildly different concept. The high fantasy, seamlessly traversable world of Elden Ring – its knights and magic – are replaced by bleak, futuristic areas, often segmented by the mission. We get giant warring mechs, thundering across its world at breakneck speed. We get explosive battles, going from tanks in the city to a colossal, weaponised mining ship. The sense of scale is often awe-inspiring, but can the technology handle it?
Let’s kick off then with the graphics modes. There are three choices on PS5, Series X and Series S – and they work similarly to Elden Ring. Taking PS5 as an example, frame-rate mode and quality mode differ mainly in resolution. The quality mode runs at a fixed 3840×2160 resolution, even with big frame-rate drops, backed by a form of temporal anti-aliasing. However the frame-rate mode is a more sensible pick all round, in that it dynamically adjusts image quality based on how near or far it is from 60fps. So, at maximum it targets 4K in simpler scenes, and then its lower bound comes in at 2688×1512 – the same as Elden Ring. If the frame-rate is still going below 60fps with the resolution bottoming out at 1512p, the game doesn’t adjust any further and the frame-rate drops become greater.
