Buy, Borrow, or Bury: Army of Two
Electronic Arts isn’t exactly known for bringing quality titles to us gamers. Still, there was a lot of buzz about Army of Two leading up to its release, many people said it was actually a quality game…one that people could purchase without buyer’s remorse. Now that I’ve had a chance to complete it, I figured I’d share my thoughts in yet another installment of Buy, Borrow, or Bury.
Alright so if you don’t know what Army of Two is about, it’s basically a third person shooter which revolves around cooperative play. The game heavily encourages team work both in the single player campaign as well as online with a friend. I had the opportunity to play the game both ways and as is usually the case you can get a lot more out of Army of Two if you have someone to play it with. The most common theme of the game is something that any MMO player will be comfortable with – aggro. Aggro, to those fortunate enough to have not lost their lives to an MMO like World of Warcraft, is the concept of one person taking all of the attention of the enemy so that other players (or, in Army of Two’s case, player) can do what they need to do without being harassed. This works in a shooter environment because one soldier can be distracting all of the enemies while the other sneaks around behind them and takes them out without being discovered. This is a re-occurring theme in Army of Two to say the least, so make sure you get the idea of managing aggro down if you plan on playing Army of Two. There are plenty of other cooperative objectives as well, things like boosting your companion over a wall, busting down doors, and even giving your pal a high-five when you approve of his performance.
The other key cooperative gameplay element occurs when you get knocked down. Basically, when a player takes too much damage they’re knocked to the ground where they can continue to lay down some support fire and kill enemies, but as they’re seated on the ground they can’t move. This is where teamwork comes in. It’s not your friend’s job to come in and heal you. The only problem? You may have fallen in an area where you can’t be healed without getting shot at. Sounds pretty frustrating eh? That’s why there’s a feature to drag a downed player to safety. It’s actually pretty cool, you as the downed player can be dragged to relative safety all the while firing your gun and holding off the enemy. It’s straight out of the movies. As long as your partner gets to you in time (and vice versa, if you’re the rescuer) you can be downed pretty much as many times as you want without worrying about losing the game.
So with all of these cooperative elements of the game I have to admit I expected there to be a lot of bugs. Things like my partner not following me or not helping to boost me over walls or getting stuck somewhere where I couldn’t get to him or he couldn’t get to me to complete a cooperative objective. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that that almost never happened. I only ran into problems with the cooperative play on the very last level where my AI partner became stuck to a wall and I had to sort of come and push him out so he could follow me. Other than that there were no problems.
One of the big elements of the game is unlocking and customizing weapons. Roughly two times per level you’ll be presented with a “Mid-Mission Store” that allows you to purchase new weapons and upgrade existing ones. The weapons run the usual gamut of guns – AK47s, M4 carbines, sniper rifles, missile launchers, sub machine guns and so on. There’s a good deal of upgrades for the bulk of the weapons (although side-arms were generally devoid of upgrades). You can buy a better stock for your gun to make it more stable and accurate, upgrade the magazine capacity, add an under-barrel grenade launcher, and even add a shield to the front of the gun to prevent some damage. One of the funnier upgrades is the ability to change the appearance of your weapon by “pimping” it. Now pimping is a phrase that should have died with MTV’s Pimp My Ride, but the idea is fairly straightforward. When you pimp a gun you get a gold-plated version of that gun along with tons of pretty accents. What’s the good part about that you ask? Well you don’t expect a flashy gun like that to go unnoticed do you? With a pimped gun you can draw more aggro than with a normal gun. Admit it, you’ve always wanted to run around wielding a gold AK47 with a golden Stinger missile strung across your back!
The game is short. Only 6 levels, but to be fair each level is pretty long…about the size of 2 levels in your average game. Since the game I completely most recently before Army of Two was Condemned 2, I’d have to say that one Army of Two level was about the equivalent of two Condemned levels. The single player campaign took me about 8 hours to complete but there’s a lot of replay value there. Aside from playing through the campaign both single player and with a friend online, you can also play online multiplayer modes. The usual suspects are there, team deathmatches of the world unite, and so on.
Overall I have to say the game is really fun. It takes a little getting used to and the tutorials leave something to be desired but it’s the perfect equivalent of a summer fun film. One of those shoot em’ up types of movies where you go to just relax and turn your brain off for a couple hours to enjoy some mayhem. That’s what Army of Two is only you’re causing the mayhem hopefully with one of your friends. Still, because of its relatively short length I have to give Army of Two a Borrow. It’s the perfect game for a rental because you can beat it in a weekend and have a good time doing so. I was pleasantly surprised by the game and I’m interested to see what the sequel (if there is one) will bring. Not only that but I’m interested to see what they’ll name it…Army of Two 2? Army of Three? Vexing…
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