- Title: Army of Two
- Platform:Xbox 360
- Publisher: EA Games
- Developer: EA Montreal
- ESRB Rating: “M” for Mature
- Genre: Co-op TPS
- Pros: Playing co-op is fun; nice graphics
- Cons: Poorly told story; single-player blows; dumb A.I.; core gameplay feels sloppy
- Achievements: Good mix between single and multiplayer.
Features
Army of Two’s features list is pretty standard stuff, with a couple of strange omissions. There is a short campaign mode that can be played in single-player or co-op locally or on Xbox Live. And there is a competitive online mode where teams of two try to earn more money than the other team by killing NPCs and completing objectives. Strangely, though, a couple of features weren’t included. Such as playing the game on a LAN (you have to have two XBL Gold accounts to do this …) and you can’t play with people from other regions.
The story in the campaign poses another problem for Army of Two. It follows a pair of mercenaries as they are sent around the globe to shoot lots of bad guys and make lots of money. They aren’t just traveling to imaginary lands and fighting fictional enemies, however. They are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and other real-world fronts ripped from the headlines. And the whole time, the game makes fun of the US Army as being inept and weak and that mercenaries do a better job. This is just insulting, particularly in the wake of the Blackwater merc scandal in Iraq. Using real world events was an extremely poor choice. Next time, just make stuff up and you won’t piss everyone off.
Gameplay
Playing the game with an A.I. partner causes a few new issues. You can do things like swap weapons (mostly pointless because the A.I. only swaps at scripted times), scold/celebrate (again, pointless), and occasionally do things like a co-op snipe. You can also tell your partner to move forward or retreat and things like that. And if you get taken down, your partner can drag you to safety and heal you.
Playing with a human partner makes most of these problems go away. Assuming that your friends aren’t morons, anyway. I have always said that playing co-op is the best way to play, and it definitely does make Army of Two a better overall experience. Is it as good as Gears of War or Halo 3’s co-op? No, because of the core issues I mentioned above. But it is still fun. It doesn’t make up for the other issues, however, because I don’t know anyone that always has friends to play with, and in a game like this, playing with random strangers on Xbox Live just isn’t all that fun. You are going to have to spend quite a bit of time with the A.I., and the game suffers.
Army of Two is a great looking game all around. Good character models, solid lighting and effects, and nice looking environments wrap up a nice visual package.
Sound
The sound is also pretty good. The frat-boy dialogue doesn’t quite match up with the excellent music and sound effects, but the sound is still excellent overall.
Bottom Line
Army of Two is a great concept that suffers from poor execution. We love co-op games, but when the fundamentals of the genre aren’t executed all that well, it is hard to really embrace a game no matter how fun co-op might be. You know how some games are just really intuitive and “feel” right from the moment you pick up the controller? Well, Army of Two doesn’t have that. Army of Two isn’t a bad game, but it isn’t special either. Give it a rental.
