An interesting – and rather unexpected – report out of 1Up has revealed that Armored Core 3 is being ported to the PSP.  Though the game’s ETA remains unknown, word is that it’ll be touched up a bit along the way, benefiting from the additions of wireless play and new parts.

The sixth iteration of From Software’s long-running franchise, AC3 provided something of a reboot for its meandering and rather nebulous storyline, as well as a more coherent retelling of the first game.  While by my lights the ‘3 series’ Armored Core titles reached their apex with Silent Line, 3 itself was a solid offering nonetheless, and managed to follow one of the more comprehensible plots in the series writ large.

As an admittedly die-hard AC fan, that I’ll pick the game up is a foregone conclusion, yet I can’t help but wonder what prompted the decision to specifically port over 3.  Last Raven, the final PS2 Armored Core, was a veritable monument to unused potential, with a premise that could have been absolutely brilliant had it been developed further; to this day I lament the lost opportunity enshrined within the game’s coding.  But for all that it was a great AC title, and would seem a more obvious choice; neither first nor last to appear on the PlayStation 2, 3, despite the relative lucidity with which it tells its story, remains the family’s rather awkward middle child.

The absence of a second tier of shoulder buttons should also give the AC devotee (all five of them) pause, as the manipulation of both sets is absolutely critical for successful deployment of the series’ notoriously idiosyncratic control scheme.  Formula Front sidestepped the issue by, in essence, taking a page from Doom (of all things) – without recourse to the oft-mourned second ‘analog stick’ (or shuttle), it simply removed the vertical axis altogether as a manipulable element of the aiming mechanics.  More a marriage of convenience than anything else, the solution, nevertheless, was serviceable enough, and for my part I’ll be curious to see the approach that From Software takes this time around.

Source: 1Up