Army of Two

"Fun with a friend, less so playing with the AI."

A Review by Bill Lange

BOTTOM LINE: Dumb shoot-em-up fun with a friend, but becomes considerably less entertaining when partnered with the AI.

Women be warned: Army of Two drips with so much testosterone that you could grow a beard within minutes of picking up the controller. Seriously, preorders should have come with a free keg stand.

Army of Two's campaign revolves around Tyson and Rios, frat boys with body armor. Our heroic mercenaries (sorry, "private military contractors") bump fists on command, and sneak in a little air guitar before perforating some faces. The plot is familiar territory for throwaway Hollywood blockbusters, and very predictable. If you can't see the double-cross coming, you aren't old enough to play this game.

The story begins in 1992 as Tyson and Rios enter U.S. Army Ranger training, and follows their journey from their start as fresh-faced cuss-happy Army grunts to lucrative careers as grizzled cuss-happy grunts for SSC, a fictional PMC firm.

Both soldiers control exactly the same, but each has a different variety of bad-ass gimp masks to don in combat. You can carry one primary weapon, one special weapon and a sidearm at once, but you only have access to the weapon purchase/equip menu around twice per mission. If you picked the wrong loadout for the current map, you should probably reload the mission and re-equip.

Completing primary and secondary objectives will swell your bank account, which is tapped when you take a shopping trip. There is a wide, though run-of-the-mill, selection of weapons to purchase, and each has multiple upgrades available if you have enough coin. You can even pimp out your guns with gold plating and bling, which is even more stupid than it sounds.

Army of Two makes an effort to stand out from other, better action games by (surprise!) including a gimmick. Firing on the enemy generates Aggro, which fixes your adversaries' attention squarely on you, and conveniently making your partner invisible. Seriously, you can see right through him.

Army of Two works best when playing with a friend. Launching a coordinated surgical strike with your partner is very satisfying, as is sprinting into the enemy's face and giving him a lead overdose. Creating a pincer attack and trying to take down more bad guys than your partner is friendly competition at its best.

When playing with the AI partner, the game falls into a boring routine: send your partner up ahead in aggressive mode to soak up bullets, then sneak around to the enemy's flank and introduce them to your boomstick. Glitches make your partner even less effective than expected, since he can't shoot to save his life (literally), and will happily wander out in the open when cover is easily available.

If you take one bullet too many, the game isn't necessarily over. Your partner can drag you to safety and perform some voodoo spell that almost instantly brings you back from the brink, but even this simple gameplay mechanic has its own problems. While the rescuer hoofs it to a safer position, the injured character can lay down covering fire. However, the whirlygig camera seems to always snap to an awkward position that sends your bullets flying uselessly into a wall while your savior has his hindquarters shot off. The AI partner also has a charming tendency to drag you into a wide open area to administer TLC while a small army has its guns trained on you.

The developers made the poor decision of working the 9/11 attacks into Army of Two's storyline; even though they're just a background element, the mention feels inappropriate. The suggestion is made that SSC is profiting directly from an offensive launched as a result of the terrorist attack, and indirectly from the deaths of thousands of American civilians. I realize that this scenario more than likely happened in real life, but most of us play video games to escape the harshness of the real world.

Rent Army of Two (or pick it up on the cheap) to experience its entertaining co-op action, but don't expect a reinvention of the modern shooter.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/15/08

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