Army of Two: The 40th Day Review (360) - ExtremeGamer's Blog

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Army of Two: The 40th Day Review (360)

Posted on February 24, 2010 at 05:43 AM.

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The sequel to the co-op blockbuster Army of Two has been released, while it improved many things over the original, there are still some issues. The first game was fun, but the obnoxious banter between the 2 mercenaries basically made the game annoying to play, to the fact that I gave up on it. The sequel dropped all the useless banter and made the game fun with a pretty decent story.

To start off, I played the game through on the hardest setting, Contractor. Why? I don't know, maybe to punish myself or that I saw there was 150 more achievement points for beating it on this level. In the end, I did beat it, but wished I would have just played it on normal instead, but more on that later.

The story, if you call it one, is that your two man army is in Shanghai for a mission, when all hell breaks loose. A radical has sent his men and attacked the city. It feels like a big summer blockbuster film, shot by Michael Bay. Buildings collapse as airliners crash into them, bombs go off, buildings topple from explosives, etc. It feels a little too much from the 9/11 comparisons but the first game started with 9/11, so it works. Aside from that, there's not much to the story. You're not really in the mood to stop the destruction, just getting yourselves out of the city. Which, you play a money grubbing mercenary, so that works as well.

This is a 3rd person shooter in the Gears of War type control scheme. You're ducking for cover, and constantly shooting bad guys every chance you get. The biggest bump for me with this game is the morale decisions that were added. These make the game feel like you are really a part of it. There are several of these, the first one is early one where you are given orders to kill a friend. Depending on which choice you make, the rest of the game changes. These decisions carry out through the 7 chapters of the game. A decision I made in the 3rd level came back to haunt me in the 7th. Cool stuff.

The game is about 7 hours long on the hardest setting, and I died a lot. If you play normal, it's probably a 5-6 hour game. I went back on the easiest setting to grab some final few achievements and breezed through the levels.

There is multiplayer functionality of the title, there's a versus mode where 8 teams of two team up against each other. Nice twist on the normal team death match modes that usually are all over these types of game. The Extraction mode (which is only unlocked with pre-orders until the game has been out 30 days) is just like the Horde Mode from Gears of War. You and your buddies take on wave after wave of bad guys. I tried it and was bored after a few waves honestly. Adding to that, the entire game can be played co-op over XBox Live, which is great if you have a buddy who wants to play it with you as well.

Some of my annoyances are the checkpoints. In a word, they are awful. You'll battle through 10 minutes of baddies to die, then to have to go through the same 10 minute segment again. Then there's other checkpoints that are 2 minutes apart. It's just not balanced and, especially with the hardest level, it became very frustrating.

A big gripe from the first game was how bad your partners AI was when you didn't have an actual friend playing with you, luckily this has been fixed for The 40th Day. Now the partner pretty much plays like a real person. Except for the final scene where the moron dragged me into a grenade once, and incoming fire twice. I found myself actually cursing out a computer partner.

Overall, if you want a military type shooter, that feels like a blockbuster movie with some epic scenes, like battling down the side of a toppled building, some humor tossed in, and a pretty cool story, then this is at least worth a rent.

Liked

- The computer partner was actually useful 95% of the time. Made the game fun instead of a chore.

- The epic movie feel of it, especially the scene early on climbing down the side of a building was a jaw dropping experience. The endings all worked as well (I saw 2 of the 3).

- The morale choices were great, some may find the actual choices crossing the line, but it also helped the game have that movie feel. But I do warn, there are a couple choices that made me go "wow, can't believe they put that in a game".

Disliked

- The checkpoint system is awful. The final mission has you storming a temple, nothing like getting all the way up it, dying, and having to replay it. UGH.

- While I enjoyed the story, wish more was explained of the what and why.

- Online feels tacked on, but it is there, just wish it was a deeper, more fulfilling experience.

Overall Score - 8.0 out of 10