Bursting round the corner, I fired my rockets at the enemy Mechs, powersliding round them to avoid their fire before slipping past towards their base. Then just as I lined up to my final target and fired, I realised that my rockets were gone and my guns wouldn't dent its armour. All this meant only one thing: it's back to the drawing board. Armored Core 4, the latest in a dozen-long series of Battle-Mech shooters, is a game of two parts: combat and customisation. Instead of simply giving you better vehicles as you progress, you get to customise, design and even paint your Armored Core between missions. With several hundred different parts and options, you can build to suit whatever play-style you want. But whatever you build, expect to be modifying it often. Thankfully you can save up to 100 designs and then pick and choose between them. It's a slow, thoughtful and detailed way to create the perfect tool for the job every time. The combat section, however, is the opposite. Missions are short, frenetic and over all too quickly, being either ridiculously easy, if you built the right schematic, or obscenely difficult otherwise. The briefings are vague and unhelpful, giving you little idea of what you're up against, or what your objectives are (although blowing everything up usually works). Worse still, the game imposes an artificial combat zone; naturally it's positioned to stop you flanking the enemy properly or getting a good sniper position and leaving it means mission failure. Still, there's some fun to be had using your weird creations to rain hell-fire upon tanks and helicopters alike, just don't expect the appeal to last long. [Graeme Strachan]