True to FromSoftware's creative vision, Armored Core 6 now has a mech that's CJ riding Thomas the Tank Engine
It's not an anthropomorphised fictional train. It's a meme.
It took modders less than a day to add CJ from San Andreas to Armored Core 6, and the meme train just keeps rolling down the tracks: I present to you CJ and Thomas the Tank Engine. Together at last. Wait… Yes it is a rather unfortunate confluence of body positions and overall deeply, deeply cursed, but I think we'll leave it there.
The obvious next step is for Thomas' chassis to have a Shrek plushie hanging somewhere. The Thomas the Tank Engine mod replaces the EL-TL-11 FORTALEZA legs with the beloved childrens' train, and is the creation of ScrubMilk, whose previous greatest hits include making Elden Ring's Torrent into a Minecraft horse. Which is a neat segue into the fact that, drunk with power, modders have also started putting Armored Cores into Elden Ring. Dizzy yet? This is getting like Fortnite.
The Thomas the Tank Engine in Armored Core 6 can be slightly customised via the part colours, which is set to white but you can fiddle with the weathering and glossiness, "though I myself have it set to no battle-wear or gloss" declares ScrubMilk. Quite right too, no-one likes a dirty engine.
I managed to fire up Armored Core 6 this past weekend and it's an absolute blast, with developer FromSoftware clearly having a firm idea of what makes a good mech game (great mechs and lots of fabulously explosive fights) and following through with all the force of a gigantic metal fist to the jaw.
But don't take my word for it: PCG's resident mech expert Wes Fenlon awarded the game a glowing 87%, saying that "it may have taken FromSoftware a decade to return to its love of mechs, but it was worth the wait: Armored Core 6 is a 'we're back on our bullshit' slam dunk." Spot-on. And now you can do the dunking with a CJ/Thomas hybrid, just as director Masaru Yamamura surely intended.