On the surface, games can appear to be flawless, enjoyable and worth 60 dollars. Sometimes, though, you’re going to have to look deep, deep down to find these flaws. I searched for it, and sadly enough I found it. It was less of a deep, deep down and more of a start, a down, and an A button away… darn you multiplayer… darn you…
Visual & Audio:
Visuals surprised me in the way that I thought that this game was going to be very dark and gloomy. Little did I know that if the sun hits just right, you can see the shiny smile on that terrorist’s face as you blow him to kingdom come! They really hit a homerun with the weather effects along with gloom and what not.
Audio is what is expected from this title; accurate. From hearing the sound effects from so many games, the gun shots all start to sound very similar. >_< But gun sounds will be gun sounds, what can you do? The real audio that catches attention is the mid-game voice-overs. When playing the campaign, you will constantly hear the two main characters arguing or just plain talking about whats going on, which is by the way, very entertaining.
Gameplay:
If you played Gears of War and liked it, then you will probably enjoy playing Army of Two. Both Gears and AoT were made using the Unreal engine, so you’re going to get a similar feel while shooting and controlling.
Army of Two is played as an over the shoulder third-person shooter. As an army of two you will often find your self cowering behind crates and other objects as you fight for your -CENSORED DUE TO SPOILERS-. This will feel like mix between a run and gun and a stop and pop shooter.
Aggro plays a big role in how you play the game. I probably won’t do a good job at explaining this, but I will do my best. Aggro is what your teammate has if everyone is paying attention to him. So if every terrorist in site is firing at him, that means he has all the aggro and they don’t even notice you. In Army of Two you have an aggro meter that shows who has all the aggro, if your teammate has it he will be glowing red and you, not having aggro, will be slightly transparent. The possibilities after that aren’t endless, but it is pretty funny running straight up the middle and taking out three guys who aren’t looking at you.
You have a variety of weapons to choose from. Depending on how you like to play you can choose a assault rifle, or even a grenade launcher. But when playing, you will often find yourself with no ammo, or it might just be me because I have a tendency to use one entire clip on a guy even if he is already on the ground. Almost every weapon can be upgraded with barrels, grips, bigger magazines, etc. If you want, you can even upgrade your weapon with what they like to call “pimp”. If you pimp your weapon it then becomes golden. The only thing that that does is change the colour and give you more aggro.
You can play this game however you like, whether it be staying back and using the whole pop’up and pop’em in the face with your sniper rifle, assault rifle, or pistol or running in with your shot gun pushing Y to roll, pulling matrix-like moves and punching the terrorist in the face! I like using the second opinion, but here is a tip: if you are playing with a friend, then I would avoid using that technique on the account that your teammate is going to get very pissed, or will be running up along side you through this whole ordeal with their own shotgun… which can lead to sweet victory or a tasteless (or salty) defeat… 🙁
This game has three different difficulties: Recruit, Contractor and Professional. I am currently playing on Professional (play time has been altered on the basis that Super Smash Brothers and school own me). So far, Professional hasn’t been too hard. There’s occasional outbursts of terrorist AK’s that will have you restarting from a checkpoint. The same can happen if you have teammates who play superhero kamikaze… people don’t like that…
The melee system is what had me saying “Army of Two, you dropped the ball”. To melee an enemy you must run up to that terrorist and push R trigger, the same button to shoot. This leads to a lot of problems, first problem is that you keep firing your weapon instead of actually hitting the guy, that makes is so that you are now reloading and the terrorist can do with what he pleases. Second problem is that its always a gamble to see who will actually get the kill. There is another problem but I will confront that later in the multiplayer section.
Multiplayer & AI Co-op:
The AI can often be a problem at times, sometimes he has the need to follow you when you specifically tell him to stay right where he is, or you may want him to follow you so he can boost you up to finish the mission, but he decides that he should stay right there, lodged between two rocks.
I strongly suggest playing offline splitscreen or online co-op with a friend. This game does not cut out anything online from the offline campaign. Online with a friend will have you laughing every 5 minutes due unexpected situations.
If you so choose, you can run up to your friend and push A to give him kudos, or you can smite him down with a backhand or a punch to the face. This is really cool idea and looks really funny, but the problem is that to hit your friend you use the R trigger, the same button to shoot, and the same button to hit the enemy! So Army of Two now turns into Army of One when it comes to hitting the enemy because you fear your might hurt your friend.
Online Versus:
You and a friend can team up to fight two other people online. You can even have two people from the same console fighting two other people online. Versus has three different game modes you can play:
Warzone (a battle mode where there are NPCs scattered all over the map, and your objective is to assassinate someone, blow up something, or save and bring someone back to a helicopter before the other team does),
Extraction (the same as Warzone, but your only objective is to save and bring people back to your helicopter, while the other team is trying to do the same),
and Bounties (the same as everything else only your trying to assassinate and blow things up before the other team does).
I have this to say about multiplayer, WHY!? Your goal in multiplayer is to gain money, everything you do will have you gain money. If you do the objective at hand you will gain more money than anything else, such as killing the other team or random NPCs. Online’s melee is exactly the same offline, but now you’re fighting against actual humans so someone is always going to come out angry.
When you die, you have the choice to wait 10 seconds and respawn, or wait for your friend to run over top of you and push A to heal you. All it takes to revive your teammate is to push A, so when you’re having a two vs one situation, the other team just has to run around you pushing R and A and they will win because they just need to hit you once and you’re done.
My friend and I were playing online yesterday, and for some odd reason we could not beat these guys in any close range fight, but it was great for us because we would get to the objective first, blow it up, and then we would both lose the fight. We would then respawn on the other side of the map, exactly where the new objective was, so now we would just finish assassinating someone when the team would show up and kill us. It went on until we were beating these guys by 2 million.
Pros:
+ Co-op Through Entire Campaign
+ Different Playing Styles
+ Variety and Upgradeable Weapons
+ Kick-Anus Storyline
Cons:
– AI Isn’t Very Smart
– Melee System Needs Work
– Far Too Many NPCs Online
I give Army of Two a:
7.5/10