Army of Two

"A game with a lot of potential, but too many flaws"

ARMY OF TWO: A review by Ayame95

Army of Two is a game with a lot of good ideas. There are many gameplay elements that seem to have a lot of potential to work well and really bring something new to the cooperative gaming experience (something too often overlooked). But the unfortunate reality is that the game fails to execute on too many levels, and has too many unwelcome additions to make it succeed. In this review I will try to be as detailed and specific as possible, in order to help the reader make their own decision about whether Army of Two is right for them.

GAMEPLAY – 7/10

Army of Two is a third person shooter. In many ways it plays similar to “Gears of War,” in that you move from cover to cover, either peaking out to shoot at your enemies or using “blindfire” to hope for the best. Enemies also move out and take cover, using the same techniques to try to take you down. Unfortunately, the system is not nearly as tight as Gears of War or other entries into this genre for several reasons. For starters, the movement and aiming feel a little loose and are a bit more difficult to control than you'd like. Too often I found myself having trouble drawing a bead on an enemies, or having trouble tracking them as they ran across the screen. The cover system also is confusing, since unlike other games that use this element (e.g. Gears of War, Rainbow Six: Vegas), there is no button or visual cue to let you know when you are in cover, and the levels don't really seem designed in such a way as to optimize this gameplay. The whole experience simply doesn't feel intuitive in the way a good game should, and I frequently found myself struggling against the controls, not quite being able to make the character do what I wanted.

The focus of Army of two is on cooperative play, either with a friend (splitscreen or online) or with an A.I. companion. The former is highly preferably to the latter, since the friendly A.I. is dumb and seldom does what you want or expect. There are a number of commands you can give to you buddy, but I often just found myself telling the computer companion to take cover and shoot, since anything else usually resulted in a disaster. Playing with a friend either locally or through Xbox Live is the best way to experience this game, and it is through this method of play that you are able to derive the most enjoyment and best overlook the game's problems.

There are number of cooperative specific actions that you can do: switch weapons with your partner, cooperative sniping (your companion snipes a target at the exact moment you snipe another), mobile cover (one character uses a piece of debris as a shield and advances while the other guy shoots from behind it), helping each other over various obstacles, and some other stuff. Once again, all this stuff works better with a real-life friend that the A.I.

The cooperative mechanic is aided by something called “aggo,” which is simply a meter that swings between the two characters. The more you shoot, the more aggo you get and the more enemies concentrate their fire on you. This leaves the other character free to sneak around and eliminate enemies from the flank or rear. It's kind of a cool mechanic, but I once again found that the levels were simply not designed to take advantage of this system.

One of the game's strengths is its “shopping” mechanic. Between missions (and even at predetermined points within them) you can buy new weapons and gears, and upgrade the ones you have. The system is pretty robust, and you can really customize your stuff in a lot of different ways. You can even “pimp out” your weapons in gold and silver (try not to laugh, this is the actual phrase they use). This is one part of Army of Two that is well done and motivates you to play, since completing more missions and side objectives within them earn you more cash.

There is also an online versus multiplayer element to the game. Players team up in teams of two, and compete with other teams to try and complete various objectives, which in turn earn the monetary rewards that can be used to upgrade weapons and equipment. There are several gametypes, but to be honest I found it hard to tell the difference between them, and was often not even aware of which I was playing. The ideas behind multiplayer are interesting, but unfortunately it suffers from the same basic gameplay issues described earlier.

STORY -- 1/10

This is where Army of Two falls flat on its face. Where do I even start? The story is beyond terrible, and honestly goes a long way towards ruining the game…and that's even taking into consideration the fact that nobody plays games like this for the story.

For starters, I have never hated the main character(s) of a game more than the two boneheads who star in this game. “Rios” and “Salem” amount to two meatheaded fratboys who high-five while saying things like “Who da man?” or “Whattup, dog!?” or play air guitar while singing “Ladies, lift up your shirts!” These are actions that you can actually take during gameplay…on the battlefield. Rios and Salem are precisely the kind of people most of us spend our lives trying to avoid. They even talk about how they are using the money they are making from killing people to do stuff like buy a television or bet on a football game…I'm not even joking. It is made even worse by making one of the guys occasionally come out of character to talk in hushed tones about some sort of global conspiracy…and then the other guy says “you and your crazy conspiracy theories.” This specific interaction happens maybe a dozen times or more in the game without going any further. They should have done something with it or simply dropped it from the game entirely. There is a way to do a tough, hardened jock character in an action game (sorry to say it again, but Gears of War)…but this is not it.

The story follows these two guys from their early days in the army, to their careers as professional mercenaries. You travel to all the major real world hotspots: Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and more. The story touches on sensitive material by referencing the 9/11 disaster, and by having you fight suicide bombers. There was a chance here for the game to touch on some of these issues as well as the reality of private military corporations and their place in the modern world in an interesting way…but it does not. Instead the inclusion of such elements somehow cheapen the game, making the cookie-cutter plot also seem a bit untasteful. To top it off, the game is relatively short (6-8 hours on the medium difficulty is a fair estimate).

Another gripe I have with this game is that the bosses are simply terrible. I really don't even know where to begin with how anti-climactic and cheesy they are. Several times I did not even know I was fighting the boss until I had defeated him, and their dialogue is honestly painful to listen to at times.

Yet another annoying flaw is the constant minor cutscenes that take you out of the gameplay. Every single door you open or grating you rip down pulls out of the game to a brief cutscene. Besides being a constant and annoying interruption, this cuts badly into to the immersion factor.

Overall, the story is so poorly done, it makes you wonder why nobody involved in making or publishing the game did not catch it. It's made even worse by the obvious potential to do something interesting and original with it.

GRAPHICS/SOUND – 7/10

Army of Two looks quite good. I play this game on a 40-inch HDTV, and the main character models looks good and move well. Many of the environments are well detailed (although there are some bad textures to be found), even if their design is very far from original. I didn't see much pop-up and the draw distance is fine…although once again the level design is pretty linear and enclosed. Enemies look quite good and die in variety of interesting ways, but you do tend to see the same character model over and over again.

The sound is done well enough and the weapon and explosions sound realistic. But the voice-acting is terrible and sort of ruins the auditory experience, not making it really matter whether it's good or not.

The game's menus, while looking nice, are awkward and somewhat inconvenient to use. There are frequent loading times between different elements of the menu in the shopping section, and I consider that nearly unforgivable.

REPLAYABILITY -- 7/10

As mentioned earlier, the game is on the short side and you will probably complete the singleplayer campaign in 6-8 hours on the medium difficulty. There are three difficulty settings, side objectives and the desire to earn more cash (to buy and upgrade weapons). The versus mode is not unenjoyable, but I doubt you'll keep coming back to it with so many better alternatives out there.

What it really comes down to is whether or not you are the sort of person who enjoys the cooperative experience. If you like having a friend over or hooking up over Xbox Live for some co-op, then you are going to enjoy the game and you probably will have a reason to come back to it. If this is not your primary goal in getting this game, you should probably skip it.

CONCLUSION

Army of Two is a game with a lot of interesting gameplay ideas. Additionally, it's nice to see a focus on coop play, since so many developers fail to do it well. There could even be a cool story there, looking at how our modern world is affected when armies become corporations.

But the reality is that none of the gameplay elements (or even the basic action mechanic) are very well implemented. The dull story and detestable main characters also detract from the overall value of the product.

It is frustrating to see a game that could have been so much more be held back by so many flaws. I'm not sure if the developers ran out of time and money to improve on these elements (though the game was delayed significantly), or if the published focused-grouped all the originality out of the game and left all the good stuff on the cutting room floor. Or perhaps nobody in charge was simply able to see the final product for what it was.

If you are interested in a strong cooperative experience with a friend and can be a little bit forgiving of gameplay issues, than Army of Two might be worth picking up now. But otherwise I'd advise people to wait until they can get it used or from the bargain bin somewhere down the line. In the very least, it should be rented first before purchase. There's just too many other good games out there right now to bother with something that just doesn't come together.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/17/08

Game Release: Army of Two (US, 03/06/08)