PS3 Game Review: Army of Two

OVERALL:  8/10
Game Play:  8/10
Graphics quality:  8.5/10
Addiction value:  7/10
Funness:  8/10
Value to own:  Yes
Replayability:  Maybe twice

I really enjoyed the fact that this game was made to be played co-op mode.  I think it’s always fun to play with tactics and this is exactly what the is designed to do.  The dialogue in this game is a little weak and the plot is as well, but the idea of the game is brilliant.  It’s a game to play with a good friend throughout the weekend. 

You need to strategically place yourself in this game and use “Aggro” to move around the map like a chess peice.  Aggro is when you or your partner are fighting aggressively and the enemies are targeting one of you.  The player turns a glowing red and while this is occuring you can sneak around the floor to help your partner out.  If your partner is hurt, you can drag them to a safe spot and perform first aid to help them get back into the game.  You only have a short amount of time to do this before you need to start from the checkpoint again. 

The game was pretty difficult the first time around.  Certainly was not a cakewalk — but that made the game more fun overall.  I enjoyed the fact that you can purchase guns and the many different combinations of additions (adding different barrel or stock, for example) you can buy throughout the game.  Each addition can increase or decrease the gun specifications (ie - damage, accuracy, ammo, aggro).  It reminded me of Counter-strike on steriods.  You can upgrade your primary (ie - rifle), secondary (pistol) and special (sniper) which you carry around with you through the different rounds of fights.  You can purchase throughout each checkpoint where available.  You cannot purchase bullets, however, only upgrades to the gun.  Bullets are regenerated each checkpoint or picked-up during fighting. 

Where the graphics really shined when there were intermittent breaks that helped developed the storyline.  It was so crisp that at one point we had to ask ourselves whether it was a video or animation.  Very impressive set of animations indeed. 

The story of “Army of Two” revolves around hiring private military to take care of problems around the globe.  Elliot Salem and Tyson Rios are two of the best army rangers that decided to join the private practices to gain a large sum of money.  Though the long journey of taking care of the world’s problem, Salem and Rios fight their way through the battlefields in a tale of betrayal and conspiricy. 

The nice thing also about this game that there are primary and secondary objectives.  It was also impressive that there were few noticable bugs in the game (it hung once and slowed down when there were too many triangulations) thus seemed to have been thoroughly QA’ed which is nice for a change. 

I also found the AI to be pretty intelligent moving from bunker to bunker while in gun fight.  They would also run around the boxes you were hiding and converge as the needed to within the game.  Pretty decent set of algorithms built for difficulty levels. 

There are a couple of large nuiances that was just aggrevating.  When there are tool-tips or factoids, the do not go away unless you actually do the action.  The back-to-back play is completely unnecessary.  This is when ther are a lot of enemies and you must play in slow motion back-to-back combat.   You can’t swap guns if you kill an enemy.  There was very few snipping opportunities as the gun play was fairly fast paced.  We couldn’t get the SixAxis controller to work either in 1.03 update and had to revert back to the non-motion detection (which is a major shame). 

Overall, this is a great game to play with someone either in private co-op or split screen.  It’s fun and engaging and offers teamwork capable missions.  It’s a wonderful game to try and beats the pants off of Haze.