EA has been trying to please a lot of people by crafting out a game that tries to follow the footsteps of what is carved and defined as a genre fit for the hardcore demographic. They have tried numerous times but have met with a mixed response, Black and White for instance was a phenomenal game but EA never managed to sell a significant amount of copies on the other hand their “Hairy Pothead/Lord of the Bada Bings” tie-ins has been met with critical acclaim at least in terms of sales.
So where does Army of Two stand? This isn’t definitely hardcore by any means, it’s a real frustrating way of trying to be hardcore and playing hopscotch with the genre that Gears excelled in. A piece of advice to all, do not play this game alone, this is a co-op experience and is best played with a ‘human’ buddy. Under any circumstance to enjoy the fruits of hard labor of the developers do not use the A.I. buddy or suffer from serious bouts of frustration at every level.
I usually don’t start a review outlining the bad and then moving forward but the levels of frustrations this game brought is just plain annoying and inexcusable. This game it seems has been passed without any testing to account for an average experience from the house of Electronic Arts who are usually known for creating games that generally garner a mass following.
You pick Salem or Rios who have been hired as private mercs by the SSC (Security and Strategy Corporation) and are sent to deal in areas where the U.S. army has either suffered too many losses in terms of humans’ lives or areas, which are out of the jurisdiction of government negotiations.
Mission’s range from infiltrating Iraq, Afghanistan, China and other areas that the U.S believes, are zones of terrorist threats and insurgencies. There isn’t too much story to dig through. It’s the usual war plot line with a hidden moral satire of Private Military Corporation that is inspired by real life events (Blackwater Gate).
A simple task for which you are paid handsomely to purchase further upgrades for your character that gives the game a pretty cool RPG-esque feel. Guns are divided into primary (Heavy), Secondary (Light), Special (Sniping) and Gear (masks and armor). Each category has Guns that can be bought and upgraded (Including RPGs) as the player feels like and can be gimped making each of them look like they’ve been given a (Insert your Favorite Fashion Brand) Job.
This buying and upgrading can get pretty addictive, although I would have loved if players could sell their weapons a la Diablo. This level of Customization adds quite a bit of freshness to the game. The weapon market can also be accessed during certain points within the game although it requires the player to go back through a variety of loading screens. The devs could have made this easier if they played enough Counter Strike, which makes Buying weapons so darn simple.
The co-op taunts are surprisingly the best bits in the game, be it air guitaring during an intense firefight with Dr.Evil Chemical guy in Afghanistan or head-butting your partner for his utterly stupid moments which are quite often. These actions prove to be pretty much satisfying and fun. On the other hand Co-op actions include sniping, boosting over ledges, using a car door as a shield while ploughing through the enemy, sniping while on a parachute, or parachuting while sniping and going back to back, whereby you enter into ‘bullet time mode’ and punch through enemies who are thrown at you like a pack of blood hounds step jumps from Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell series and last but not the least pushing occasional buttons here and there.
Most of these get really mundane after a point of time, and the exciting co-op moves that you’d actually want to pull off are hidden and shown under the veil of cut-scenes.
The game also borrows heavily from Gears of War with the cover system that has been implemented quite half-heartedly. The reason being it is almost impossible to shoot your enemy down with the aiming system. Most of your kills rely on the blind fire technique which is quite inaccurate. Another major gripe is that you can’t stick to walls so as to get a clear shot at your enemy, this technique if present would have proved quite handy when confronting Bosses and armored troopers who can’t be shot from the front and make use of the Aggro system.
The Aggro system is a rather neat addition to the game. But it again requires a human buddy to be exploited and enjoyed completely. The Aggro meter present on the top of the screen basically records the levels of aggression, the player who is on a killing spree will have the meter needle turned towards him, and the enemy turns all his firepower towards him rendering the other one practically invisible. Holding the Aggressive stance for a significant amount of time lets you enter an “overkill mode” where the game turns into an arcade shooter and gives you a special ability, like a 2X damage mode or something. Upgrading your arsenal also gives a significant boost to your Aggro meter attracting more attention than your friend.
Again this is practically worthless if played without a Co-op buddy because it’s really hard to balance the levels of Aggression since the Human controlled player –
A. Has a better arsenal than the buddy A.I.
B. The Human is shooting most of the time, the A.I unless in its aggressive mode rarely shoots.
Contrary to most reviews I found the enemy A.I really good, it flanks, it throws grenades at your location constantly keeping you on your toes, converges onto your position, knows to duck for cover. Sadly there is a really horrible flaw in the game that ruins this as well. The enemies are spread till the far reaches of the screen, more often than not you cannot see who is shooting you since it is very difficult to locate the exact position of the enemy unless you throw yourself as bait and wait for a few bullets to hit you.
This I presume is an intentional thing done by the developers. But unfortunately the sub-par friendly A.I just kills this experience as well. You can rarely use the pull back feature since it leaves you completely exposed to enemy bullets and subsequent death.
Death has been taken straight out of Gears of War, there is no prominent health bar on the screen. You know you are dying when the screen starts to fade away, and then you just land up like a vegetable after getting hit a couple of times. Since co-op is the main theme of the game, the player cannot heal himself, only the buddy (Human/A.I) can do so. This is a bit complicated because you just can’t go upto your partner and patch him up, you first need to drag your partner out of harms way and then patch him. Now dragging is a bit off the mark when it comes to the friendly A.I. who keeps looking for spots and keeps dragging you around half a level before patching you up.
The A.I actually dragged me to one obscure corner of the map, inspite of no enemy being present in a million yards just to patch me up, a terrible tragedy I tell you, which brings me to level design and visuals. Level design is pretty bland and basic and doesn’t look like the UE3 engine at all. Rio and Salem are animated and designed pretty well but sadly the enemy is hardly distinguishable from level to level. It’s more of the same albeit a few variations here and there for special troopers. The vehicle sequences revolve around a Hovercraft, a buddy drives and another mans the guns. When playing alone you can only drive, the gun cannot be manned under any circumstances.
Gameplay is relatively short – 6-10 hours in the single player mode depending on the level of difficulty. I suggest players use the professional mode while playing with a friend or try and stick to the recruit mode when playing alone. I finished the game twice and found the professional mode with a Human buddy a real neat mode to play. This way not only do you explore the vast expanse of the map, which has been designed keeping two players in mind but also reduces annoying A.I. issues to a great extent. Then there is always the online mode to play with players in specific regions, E.A has a region lock for the game.
The Final Word – Army of Two is a game to plough your teeth if you have someone “Human” to play with you, even then there is too much in its path from classifying it as more than an average shooter-Cod 4 and Halo 3 are just two of them. If the developers manage to address the above problems in its sequel “Army of Two 2” (I know it sounds absurd) we might just have a stiff third person action game in our hands.
Better Than – Splinter Cell: Double Agent
Worse Than – Gears of War
– By Neelesh Mukherjee