OVERVIEW
Army of Two is a decent third-person shooter that unfortunately sticks its a boot in its mouth. When i say that i mean it has not much respect for volunteer armed services by belittling them and then making this fantasy of get it done all means not responsible mercenary fantasy that also is staged in the present War in Iraq.The game itself mostly plays fine and the Aggro system works pretty good (Your partner can hold your enemies at bay and draw attention while you flank around to them. The way this game broaches and mishandles such a controversial modern day issue is far from being Army Strong.
 The story follows Salem and Rios, two mercenaries who fight terror for big bucks with big guns. As they battle through ambush after ambush, it begins to dawn on them that someone within their own organization is selling them out and setting them up. That's right, one bad apple is screwing up the privatized military business for the rest of the upstanding mercenaries. Neither Rios nor Salem engages in any dishonorable behavior, aside from making fun of the Army for being so slow and ill-equipped. That would be fine if the Army they were making fun of were the Venusian Army. Or conversely, if Blackwater mercenaries in the real world hadn't been asked to leave Iraq for flipping out and massacring its civilians. But in Army of Two, there's no such thing as a civilian. If they aren't good guys, they're terrorists.
The game itself is a lightly tactical third-person shooter in which you take on terrorists from Somalia to Miami by shooting them with guns, punching out their lights, and hitting them with car doors--all while wearing a scary-looking goalie mask. As you thwart terror and complete missions, you earn cash that can be spent on awesome guns. From there, you can spend even more money pimping out stocks, adding grenade launcher attachments and even gold plating. With all these custom parts and that you can get for your guns still there is a hell of a time hitting anything with them. You could stop and aim and then quickly kill a non moving target with a headshot, but if your trying to run and shoot at the same time you won't do as much damage with a pimped-out gun as you would like.
This was probably done to force you to rely on your teammate, but it seems like an unnecessary handicap all the same. Even worse, enemies have incongruous visible life bars, and some of them can take more bullets than a terminator. To top it all off, they have superior aim and can hit you just as easily from 50 feet as they can from five.
To keep yourself and your partner alive, you have to take advantage of the Aggro system. Borrowed from online role-playing games, Aggro is an artificial intelligence system that makes enemies focus on whoever is doing the most damage and ignore the person doing the least. The basic idea is to have one guy draw all the enemy fire while the other one sneaks around back and shoots everybody dead. It isn't rocket science, but coordinating attacks with a friend or with the CPU is still rewarding. Sometimes, one plus one equals fun.
Campaign/MultiPlayer
The campaign isn't that long, but to the game's credit, it is fun to play through cooperatively. You can set up public co-op campaigns that just anyone can join, or private ones for just you and a friend. Once you finish, you can go online to challenge other two-man squads in versus mode. The point of any match is to make more money than your opponents, which is earned by making kills and completing objectives. Some modes have you flying around, racing to kill enemy non-player characters, while others have you rescuing hostages or planting bombs. The best of these throws a mix of objectives at you, so there's a great deal of diversity within a single match. Then again, the fact that you can't hit targets without stopping and aiming is especially apparent online. Instead, you're better off running up and smacking people, then shooting them when they're down. This is entertaining for a few hours, but it gets old pretty fast.
Closing Statement
Army of Two is a better than average shooter that roughly treads on a political landmine when it should have stormed some future battlefield. It features cool co-op mechanics and is fun to play online, with or against friends. Now if your one of those types of people that rather shoot first and ask the questions later then this is the game for you, but if you like to think in a game then this is not that type of game in my mind.
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scarface
- Mar 4, 2008
- Feb 13, 2008
- TBA
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