Army of Two (PS3)

...interwebs, just good honest fun. Army Of Two carries the legacy of this almost forgotten past-time into the new generation of console gaming, but does it live up to the classic multiplayer games of old, or will it find itself lost in a sea of Call Of Duties and Killzones?


You play as either Salem or Rios, two ex-US army soldiers who join the private military in order to rake in the big dough, but find themselves caught up in mysterious, ...
...blasting stuff? On that front, Army of Two delivers. To an extent, at least. There are plenty of weapons to choose from, from your basic AK-47 to a quite frankly ridiculous stinger missile launcher. What's better is that EVERY weapon can be upgraded in some way, whether it be silencers, larger clips, grips or shotgun/grenade attatchments, shields... you can even pimp out EVERY weapon, making them gold/chrome plated and jewel encrusted just to be ... more

It seems that more and more games these days are focusing on online multiplayer. XBox Live, Playstation Network, MMORPGs, every games company apparently wants us to be playing our games in solitary confinement, connected to other human life solely through our computer screens and our headsets. How refreshing it is, then, to see a more traditional multiplayer game emerge, one that requires you to enlist the help of a friend who can actually come over to play the game properly. It hearkens back to the days of consoles such as the N64 where four people could get together and have a blast either with, or against each other using the four controller ports on the front of the machine itself. No modem, no fancy interwebs, just good honest fun. Army Of Two carries the legacy of this almost forgotten past-time into the new generation of console gaming, but does it live up to the classic multiplayer games of old, or will it find itself lost in a sea of Call Of Duties and Killzones?

You play as either Salem or Rios, two ex-US army soldiers who join the private military in order to rake in the big dough, but find themselves caught up in mysterious, and dangerous, circumstances when a bill to privatise the military is to be voted on. It's a weak story, and it's not told particuarly well, although the cut-scenes are nice enough and the voice acting isn't terrible. Still, who cares about plot-line and depth of the characters when you can be blasting stuff? On that front, Army of Two delivers. To an extent, at least. There are plenty of weapons to choose from, from your basic AK-47 to a quite frankly ridiculous stinger missile launcher. What's better is that EVERY weapon can be upgraded in some way, whether it be silencers, larger clips, grips or shotgun/grenade attatchments, shields... you can even pimp out EVERY weapon, making them gold/chrome plated and jewel encrusted just to be extra "stlyish" whilst you kill. These upgrades cost money, which you get from completing objectives, and you get the option to go shopping at certain points between and sometimes even during missions. I ended up with a gold plated minigun, a ridiculously overpowered chrome P90, and the aforementioned stinger launcher... everything I needed to have an absolute blast (OK, that was lame).

My friend and I jumped straight into the Co-Op mode and were greeted by a nice video tutorial explaining the aggro system. Basically, if one player makes a lot of noise, firing his weapon etc. he gets "aggro", meaning all the enemies focus on him. Whilst their attention is turned, the other player can sneak around unseen and take them out. It's an interesting system for an action game of this type, but works fairly well. It makes taking advantage of cover essential, and certain mini-bosses can only be killed in this way (unless you happen to have a few rockets handy). Following the video was a brief training level, further explaining this system, whilst offering players to get used to the camera (positioned just behind your character's shoulders a la Resident Evil 4) controls which, whilst functional, seem a little bit rigid to me (And R2 to fire? What's wrong with R1?). You're also introduced to the Back To Back set-piece, where on certain occasions where you're heavily outnumbered you'll go back-to-back and be able to shoot freely focusing purely on aiming in a circle, and the ever important process of healing your teammate when they take one too many bullets and go down. What's kinda neat is that, even when you're "dead" your teammate has a limited time to reach you and revive you, and during this time you can still shoot at enemies from where you're sitting, but if you take too many more bullets that's it. Your friend can drag you into cover to heal you, but if he goes down it's all over too.

Once we got used to the controls, including the player emotes (pressing X whilst you're standing next to your teammate performs a "positive" emote, whilst pressing R2 will perform a "negative" emote), we got on with the first mission. And, it was pretty good stuff. Blasting away, finding cover, watching the on-screen aggro meter, devising ways to advance... kinda reminded me of Gears Of War. Kinda. And when we got the cash reward for completing the mission and proceeded to the shopping screen, we laughed heartily at the plainly ridiculous things we could do to our weapons, and spent far too long pondering which upgrades we should go for with out limited resources. On to mission two, and there was more blasting to be done, more hiding behind walls, and lots more people to kill. And it was fun, and we laughed and I died a few times (because I suck at console shooters... keyboard and mouse FTW!) and we killed more people, and then we went shopping again. And once more we laughed at the new barrel my mate bought for his gun, and the ridiculous shield I had bolted to mine, and we went on to mission 3. Which was more of the same, except it had a parachute bit which was controlled using the Six-Axis feature of the PS3 controller. And we shot people, and we laughed... a little less this time round... and more people died, and we blew stuff up... you can probably see where I'm going with this.

It's not like Army Of Two was ever going to be a particuarly deep game. Far from it. As a quick co-op shooter it's pretty damn good, and offers plenty of ways for you to have fun. However, if you expect any longevity from this game you're out of luck. My mate and I completed it in less than an afternoon, with the only incentive to play again being a harder difficulty mode, and to try out all the new shiny guns we'd managed to unlock. Modifying the guns was fun for a while, but the novelty wore off when you realise that most of the guns are fairly similar, and the level of customisation isn't as deep as you first think. The levels are all pretty samey, and there are far too few of them. Thinking back, probably the best moment I had with this game was when I had the minigun, and my mate smacked me on the back of the head using his "negative" emote. So I chased him around an almost cleared level smacking him back and whirring my minigun menacingly. For some reason, the noise combined with the animation of Rios running with his minigun smacking Salem over the head repeatedly and then pretending his gun is a guitar was hilarious. I think we must have been drunk or something...

So in closing, if you're looking for a reasonably good next-gen multiplayer game to kill an afternoon with a mate, you could do a lot worse than Army Of Two. If you're looking for something with any substance whatsoever, steer well clear. It's fun enough, for a while, but it'll soon be gathering dust whilst you put COD 4 back in for one more attempt at unlocking your gold AK.

Oh... and the single-player? Don't. Just... no. OK? Don't do it. Seriously. 

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