Before I start, I must mention some things about the first game. The first game, or Army of Two: One, is a third person shooter, where you can control one of two characters: Tyson Rios, or Eliot Salem. Both of them, initially as Army Rangers and later as part of a Private Military Corp (PMC), were sent into situations that required skills, deadly force, and a lot of team work. There was an underlying story about corruption, scandals, back-stabbing, and friendship and bro-love. The gameplay consisted of a lot of running around and hiding behind obstacles, shooting at enemies, drawing fire so your partner could shoot at enemies. There was one part which was called back-to-back, where you and your partner would stand back-to-back and everything would slow down so you could pick off a lot of enemies in a circular fashion. You could reward your fellow player with bro-love when they did something you liked or with bro-hate when they did something you disliked (or if you just wanted to be a dick).
An overall fun game, unless you were playing the game in single player mode. The AI was notoriously dumb; Or spiteful. The AI tended to get itself killed (more often than not) regardless of what order you gave it. Every order pretty much translates into ‘run up and stand in the middle of enemy fire and die’.
This game was fun as I pointed out earlier, but you had to have another person playing with you. This is one of those games that are tailor-made for co-op multiplayer. But then again I wish that a lot of the other games out there right now would be co-op multiplayer as well.
The characters themselves, Rios and Salem, were your typical characters. Rios was big and burly and partly the conscience of the team. Salem was smart-aleck of the group with witty quips and jabs, who generally saw things as a means to an end. But, overall both characters looked and sounded human.
Army of Two: The 40th Day gives them an “upgrade”. While the graphics of the game have gotten a lot shinier, it seems that Rios seemed gone on a steroid binge, now with muscles rivaling Chris from Resident Evil 5, on top of this he sounds like he had been hit on the head with a hammer a few times. Salem now sounds like an Italian gigolo from New York and unfortunately looks the part as well.
Does this detract from gameplay? Only if you played the first game for the characters. Fortunately this is a minor negative for the game. Gameplay has remained practically the same. There is still an agro-meter. You still hide under cover and pop out to shoot. There are still team actions. But on top of this the nifty thing (that I liked) was the “Morality Choices”. During missions you will be presented with the option to do something evil or good which leads into a comic book style montage of how your choice affected the feature. Cool thing about this is that either of the players can make the choice when it comes up on screen and the other one has to live with it. There is also a camaraderie mechanic so Rios and Salem can end up as best friends or not. What the impact on the game is beyond achievements, I don’t know. Another addition is the mock surrender mechanic. Wherein one player can surrender and the other one can sneak around to pick off enemies.
Overall the game is still fun. Single player not so much, but the multiplayer holds hours of entertainment. There is more replay value in this game (compared to the first one) mostly because of the “Morality choice” movies and plus there is always the collectors dream of unlocking all the weapons.
While the single player mode of this game may be lacking, I would recommend this game to anyone who is looking for a game to play with a friend.
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