Remember a while back when I did that preview of Army of Two: The 40th Day? If you can recall, my major complaint was my real life co-op partner, whose preferred version of the game consisted of being a major inconvenience at all costs. Well, I picked up the retail version of the game, and no longer have that complaint. Thank God for friendly AI. So, here’s a proper review of Army of Two: The 40th Day, the first review on this site that also got previewed (in case you were wondering).

If you played the original game, you’ll already know that the troublesome two that is Rios and Salem, two mercs who’d high five each other after slaughtering a town full of people if the money was good enough, have formed their own mercenary group, TransWorld Operations (or T.W.O. Like the title!). Well, our main men are in Shanghai doing some easy work when suddenly all hell breaks loose and Shanghai explodes into a giant crumbling mess. All that’s left is for you two to get the hell out of there.

The game plays like any other cover-to-cover third person shooter, so naturally you’ll be diving into cover, popping out every now and then to blow a bad guys head off with your weapon of choice. However, because the focus of the game is on the TWO aspect, you can use “aggro” to fend off enemies. Basically, whichever of your pairing is firing off more rounds and killing more guys will get the most enemies running up to them, and enemies will all but forget that the other guy is there. This allows the unnoticed partner to run around, picking off the enemies while they don’t bother looking at you. The enemies are pretty stupid in that regard; you can almost stand right next to them and they’ll barely bat an eyelid. Still, it’s a nice little system that sets it apart from other games in the genre, so I’ll tip my hat to it.

New features have even been added to make things interesting. At some points in the game you can choose to mock surrender, where one of you will put your hands up and buy the second guy some time to line up a deadly shot. There’s about five moments in the whole game where this is possible, so it feels underused and actually pretty underdeveloped, given that the scenarios just end in the pair of you blasting the place up anyway. You can also take human shields, and if the enemy you grab is a corporal, the other guys around will drop their weapons and surrender, allowing you to tie them down or blow them to hell easily. This is especially useful in the new hostage scenarios, as you can easily save everyone in seconds just by grabbing the right guy. The back-to-back situations are, well, back, but only on two occasions do they occur, so even they feel kind of pointless.

Also new is moral choices. At some moments in the game, you can choose to do something good, or something bad. Often, taking the bad route leads to a lot more cash and some shiny new guns, so the real reason is, why would you be a good guy? You’re a mercenary for Christ’s sake! That said, being a good guy means you get a pistol about halfway through the game that you wouldn’t be able to pick up if you were a mercenary son of a bitch (which you are), but since you get a Desert Eagle, which is awesome, the only reason you’d want that pistol is for completions sake. The final moral choice also totally ruins the game, and kind of implies that EA will be dropping the franchise from here on. It really was a game spoiler to get to the end of the game and then have all your efforts thrown back in your face for the sake of being a good guy.

The graphics in the game are a bit of a mixed bag. The character designs of Salem and Rios are quite well done, with plenty of facial definition (when you see their faces) and smooth animation with their interactions together. The guns in particular are pretty good looking, especially since you can customize them like crazy to make the ultimate fighting machine. The enemies and other characters, however, are all a bit samey, and the graphics just aren’t as well defined as the main guys. Also, you see a ton of buildings blowing up in this game, and every single one of the explosions is badly done and just looks stupid. What could have been an explosive masterpiece just ends up looking like two kids playing with Lego. Well done animation department. Next time, just get your kids to do it for you.

The voice acting in the game is pretty good all round, which yet another good performance from Nathan Drake (sorry, Nolan North) and some convincing acting by… other people. Even the token black guy (who doubles as the token Brit guy) sounds fairly convincing, although his character feels slightly pointless within the overall narrative. The guns sometimes sound a bit weak, but explosions often sound loud and… er, explosive. The soundtrack is forgettable, but it’s there, so it should probably get a mention, since it does an OK job of filling the space. Overall, the sounds in the game aren’t too bad.

Army of Two 2 isn’t a very long game, since it’s only got 7 levels and only a few collectables, so when you’re done with that you can go onto multiplayer. Although, why you would is another thing entirely. Of the two games I played, one lasted five minutes and resulted in a catastrophic loss for my team, and in the other me and my partner got spawn camped and tea bagged for about ten minutes before I decided to rage quite. Just like the last game, the competitive multiplayer feels tacked on and pointless, and I wouldn’t recommend touching it.

So, as we reach the conclusion of this longer than usual review, what can be learned from all this? Well, Army of Two: TFD is by no means a great game, but it is good fun while it lasts. The gun customisation is fun as always, and being able to slaughter many many people one after the other will never get old. Perhaps if the new features within the game had been fleshed out more it would achieve greatness, but until then, it sits among the other titles that failed to reach those dizzying heights and instead will forever be known as “good”.

Score: 6/10

Hated the game with an unholy passion? Are the person who spent all that time crouching up and down over my face? Tell us in the comments!