Army of Two Review

Army of Two is a third-person shooter that takes the concept of co-op play to an entirely new level. You take on the role of one half of a two-man team of mercenaries while a friend (or your friendly Xbox 360) takes on the other – there is no going it alone in this game. The game’s nature of duality extends beyond the side-by-side nature of its combat, though, because it seems that every cool idea and feature in the game is balanced by another that doesn’t work so well. The result is a game that will probably appeal to about half of the shooter fans out there.

The two in the Army of Two are Salem and Rios, two former Special Forces soldiers who have decided to leave the army and join a private security firm. This career change is driven by their belief that private security companies are better equipped and more competent than the US Army. The irony inherent in all of this seems lost on the game’s story writers in the wake of the monumental screw-ups by private security firms such as Blackwater, but we’ll just roll with it and accept that companies that give their mercenaries scary hockey masks are better equipped than the most advanced military in the world.

Central to Army of Two’s combat is the concept of aggro. If you’ve played MMORPGs before than this concept will already be familiar to you. Basically the player that presents the greatest threat or is doing the most damage gets the most attention from the computer –controlled enemies. In Army of Two, an aggro meter is prominently displayed at the top of the screen with an icon representing Salem and Rios at each end. As one player fires at the enemy the needle moves towards that player’s end of the meter. When it reaches one end, the other player is effectively rendered invisible to the enemy. It’s a pretty cool mechanism that is an effective way to model suppress and flank tactics. While one player pins down the enemy and draws their attention by emptying clip after clip in their direction, the other is free to work his way behind the enemy and make a quick kill shot.

The teamwork doesn’t end there, though. Army of Two is filled with opportunities and obstacles that all require tight teamwork. Some of these are staged, such as scripted events in mission that require you to stand back to back with your partner and fend off an assault from all sides in dramatic slow motion. Another scripted sequence you’ll see is a tandem paradrop in which one player controls the chute while the other snipes enemies on the ground. Teamwork is also necessary to get past some of the obstacles in the levels, giving your buddy a boost up or a hand down when needed. You can also help a wounded comrade by dragging him to safety while he musters the strength to cover your retreat while being pulled along the ground. These tandem moments are a mix of good and bad; some are pretty cool features while others feel tacked on simply to force you to make use of teamwork.

In keeping with the mercenary theme, all of your mission goals, secondary objectives, and your performance in general are rewarded with cash. This cash can then be spent between missions to upgrade your equipment from the game’s extensive arsenal of weapons and body armor. The contents of this arsenal range from some useful and powerful weapons and items to the simply ridiculous, such as scarier paint jobs for your goalie mask to diamond and gold bling for your weapons. Hey, it’s your money…

Playing your way through the game, you’re never quite sure if the game is taking itself seriously or not. On the one hand you have the emphasis on team tactics and on the other you have arcade-style features that feel out of place in a tactical shooter. For example, enemies have visible life bars and there are boss enemies that take a ludicrous and laughable number of bullets before finally cooperating and keeling over dead. Some enemies are just plain goofy, such as the suicide bombers that run right up to you while yelling. This epitomizes the duality of Army of Two: each cool moment is followed by a silly one – each cool feature is balanced by a useless or frustrating one. It’s a game that is best experienced as it was intended to be, by two players either in the same room or over Xbox Live. That way you can share in the excitement of the high points and yell in unison at the low points. On your own though, Army of Two is simply a mixed experience and one best put through a trial run by renting the game first. There are enough good ideas at the game’s core, though, that if they decide to make an Army of Two 2 the potential will be there for a pretty good game.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 72%. A bit too silly to be considered a serious shooter.