Army of Two

A year and a half ago, while EA was busy promoting Army of Two, Alain Tascan, General Manager for EA Montreal, had said that he wasn’t too impressed with Gears of War since it wasn’t innovative enough, nor did it bring anything new to the table. Now when you make such a powerful statement you better make sure your game delivers or you’re going to end up looking extremely foolish.

Looking back at that news article I can’t help but feel bad in a way for Alain (who I’m sure is hiding under a rock right now) since Army of Two is nowhere as awesome as Gears of War; in fact it’s as generic as it gets. To make matters worse, it’s shipped with virtually half the features that were announced during earlier previews. Enter one mediocre shooter.

Besides the whole co-op element, the only other "trick" this game has going for itself is the concept of AGGRO. For the uninitiated, AGGRO basically boils down to either you or your teammate firing at the enemy to draw their attention so that the other person can flank them and kill them. Now this works well while playing with a human partner but things can get pretty disastrous in the single player campaign. It’s not that controlling your partner is an elaborate process or anything; in fact, guiding him around the place is a very simple process; you can order him to follow you (passively or aggressively) or stay put to cover you (once again passively or aggressively) while you flank the enemy.

The reason this simple process becomes such a chore is because the game’s PAI (Partner Artificial Intelligence) suffers from extreme mental retardation. As and when you do require him to draw AGGRO, he finds it funny to just sit there and stare at the wall while mocking you with dialogues like "I got your back soldier"… when he clearly doesn’t. As expected you end up drawing all the AGGRO and he just sits put not even bothering to flank them. And then there are times when your partner will actually expose himself and attract thousands of bullets… even after you’ve ordered him to stay put. Hurray for stupidity!

As and when your partner starts taking a whole lot of damage he’ll get pretty vocal about the whole deal and if you still ignore his pleas he’ll go down like a sack of potatoes. Now it’s up to you drag him to safety and revive him by keeping the A button pressed for a couple of seconds (its Game Over if he dies). When it’s your time to get revived he manages to get the job done but there were times when he actually dragged me from cover into the line of fire only to get us both killed in a matter of seconds.


Once you get past the toolish AI, the game can actually get a bit enjoyable in bits and pieces since it does have the makings of a solid shooter. As in most action games today, it also boasts of a cover system that may not be as awesome as the one from Gears or Vegas but it’s a whole lot better than the one from Kane and Lynch (that one still gives me nightmares). Run up to a solid surface and you can manually stick behind it after which you can either pop out to shoot people or blind-fire as in the above mentioned titles. Running from cover to cover has also been simplified using a sliding mechanic, (just like in GRAW) and it works well. The same button designated for sliding also helps your character roll and climb over obstacles but for some reason there’s no sprinting in this game.

Besides all the running you’ll also indulge in a whole lot of gunning and in Army of Two you have a wide arsenal of weapons that allows you to do just that. Initially you’ll only have access to stock weapons, but the more money you make, the better you can customize them – by increasing the size of the barrel/cartridge, attaching silencers, grenade launchers, shotguns and shields, or just pimping them out with severe amounts of bling; it’s all possible in this game. As and when you do get bored of your weapon you can exchange it with your partner, but for some absurd reason you cannot pick up the weapons dead foes leave behind... WTF?

Once you’re done playing the single player campaign by yourself, you can head over to Xbox Live to play that very same campaign with a friend (although I seriously suggest you do so in the first place). Props to EA for making the co-op component absolutely lag-free even while playing with people from different countries (and I mean PAL countries only, since this game’s MP is region-locked). Besides co-op you have a bunch of mediocre PvP (player vs player) modes like Versus, Warzone, Extraction and Bounties that are nothing to shout about and you’ll find yourself heading back to CoD 4/TF2 ASAP.

Visually the game’s not bad-looking – but it’s nothing to drool over either. Certain levels (e.g. Miami) look pretty awesome while others like Somalia and Afghanistan are as generic as they come. One thing I do appreciate is the fact that frame rates are rock solid throughout the game, and both the lead characters (Rios and Salem) are extremely well-detailed.

As far as voice acting goes you have two "frat bros" constantly dropping the F bomb every few minutes while indulging in tons of juvenile jokes. While some of their banter was a bit funny, some was just plain annoying and seemed solely geared towards pleasing testosterone-charged fifteen-year-olds. But then again, this game is supposed to be a brainless shooter so it's no use expecting BioShock-esque writing in the first place, eh?

At the end of the day Army of Two is a game with tons of wasted potential. What irritates me further is that even though EA delayed this title significantly, it’s shipped with tons of problems, broken AI, and only half of the stuff we were promised initially, as a result of which it dives head-first into mediocrity. It could have rewritten the whole co-op tactical shooter genre as we know it but EA decided to rush out a dumbed-down shooter that’s painful to play alone thanks to stupid AI. Play it with a friend offline or online and you’ll enjoy the single player campaign to an extent. But after that’s over, there’s absolutely no reason to revisit the game!