Army of Two the 40th Day is a third person shooter from EA Games. The first game in the series, Army of Two came out back in 2008. Army of Two the 40th Day is about two mercenaries who get caught up in a war while doing a contract in china. The war was caused by a madman with an army who is going around killing everyone, not very original or interesting. The characters Salem and Rios are pretty cool and fun to play as but are rather two dimensional.
The gameplay in Army of Two relies heavily on teamwork; it works much better if you’re playing with a friend but the AI does a pretty good job if you’re playing alone. The gameplay is fast and fun but it doesn’t hold up to games like Gears of War that feel a lot more precise and rewarding. Unfortunately unlike the first game that kept up the action throughout the whole game this one constantly slows down for hostage situations and moral choices. Now adding these things sound like a good decision but they weren’t executed very well. The hostage situations are just you walking in and either tying up or killing the bad guys, which just slows down the combat. Moral decisions are usually a lot of fun but in Army of Two they’re just annoying, if I choose to save someone there is a clip showing happening to them after like being killed anyways or being murders. It’s supposed to show you that decisions aren’t black and white all the time but it just makes all of the decisions seem pointless, if you pick the bad way you get cash and if you pick the good way something bad happens anyway. The only moral decision that’s even interesting is the one at the very end but it will probably end up annoying you. The game would have been a lot more fun if they kept it like the first one where it was just mindless fun.
Army of Two does offer deep weapon customization option that give you a reason to play through the game again on higher difficulties but that’s only if you’re obsessed with totally completing everything. The game looks good with decent environments and good character models but it’s not going to blow you away. The online multiplayer isn’t all that good either I didn’t play much of it but from what I did play I have to say it wasn’t very fun and doesn’t compete in any way with something like Gears or Halo or even COD.
The only real saving grace this game has is that it makes you feel like a badass Salem and Rios have some good lines and help draw you into the combat which is fast paced and fun. The coolest new feature in the game is the GPS that tells you where to go and allows you to tag enemies so that they turn red allowing for easy tracking of their locations, which in turn allows you to flank them with greater ease. Another cool addition is the mock surrender which allows you to draw the enemies’ attention long enough for your partner to get a vantage point and take out your enemies. However this works much better with a human partner as opposed to an AI one. That being said the AI is still quite helpful mainly because of the aggro feature which allows for one person to easily draw out enemy fire by popping off some shots so that the enemies become less responsive to your actions. So basically you tell your partner to become aggressive and stay put, then everyone focuses on him so you can sneak around and pick them off. This is my personal favourite part of the game when you have to strategize about which way is the best way to get the upper hand, which vantage point is best and what’s the fastest way to get there without being picked off by enemies.
Army of Two the 40th Day is a good time when you’re in the middle of the action especially if you are playing co-operatively. However the game gets in its own way too often, the hostage situations and moral choices seem like the developers forced them in to the game in order to compete with some of the bigger games on the market like Mass Effect. This ends up bogging the game down and the story or lack thereof does nothing to help. If you have a friend who leaves nearby and comes over a lot you might want to consider renting this one although personally I think the first Army of Two game was more fun because it doesn’t have those annoying breakups to all of the action.
Score: 2/5
No comments:
Post a Comment