Reviews
It’s just like waiting for a bus. You wait for one and then 3 turn up at once. In the case of shooters, you wait for one and an avalanche of shooters arrives. In this case EA’s Army of Two has been thrown into the fray to compete with some quality titles. The subject of private military corporations is a bit of a hot topic in today’s global environment, especially with the conflict in the Middle East and it is in the world of the private military contractor that EA’s Army of Two is placed. The game spans almost 2 decades, starting in the past and finishing in the future and it doesn’t pull its punches on its subject matter. This is a third person co-op shooter that has a Gears of War feel to it, and you get to play either one of the two main protagonists, Elliott Salem and Tyson Rios, 2 former military men who turn to the private military sector to reap the financial benefits. There are some nice features in Army of Two that set it apart from other games, though their execution is not as polished as you would hope it would be.
The tone of the game is set from the beginning. You are in this for the money and Army of Two seems to be a game firmly rooted in a stereotypical infantile Jarhead mindset. This isn’t helped with in game turbaned suicide bombers running at you with hands held aloft. If this is done tongue in cheek its done very poorly, but the more you play, the more you see that having an army that goes to the highest bidder is not such a good idea, but then that notion seems to fall by the wayside. The high fiving juvenile behaviour becomes tiresome and some will be offended by its trivialisation of its subject matter as it seems to be glorifying the private military above the regular armed services. As a result of all this, it’s hard to care who these guys are and you don’t really want to know.
Whichever character you choose to play the single player campaign with, you get to play with your team mate in tow. You can issue commands to your team mate using the D-pad and this provides the tactical slant to the game. We are not talking Rainbow 6 type stuff here as all you get to do is order advance, cover and regroup but you can alter that to passive or aggressive by issuing the command either once (passive - blue) or twice (aggressive – red). It’s a nice feature but the fact that you cannot specify where your team mate advances to or where he should go for cover makes it cumbersome and awkward to use effectively. You issue a cover command and your team mate will sometimes hide as opposed to position himself to fire from cover. Likewise, issuing an advance command will see your partner run ahead and out of sight which inevitably results in him being downed.
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