Army of Two: The 40th Day (PS3)

 The Army of Two: The 40th Day (developed by EA Montreal and published by Electronic Arts) is the long awaited sequel to the original third-person two-player co-op shooter, Army of Two. And it’s a very solid sequel. I enjoyed both the original and the sequel and I wish there were more games that had fun, worthwhile couch co-op, like Army of Two. EA Montreal really seemed to listen to what the gaming community said about the original title and incorporated those things into this high polished and enjoyable sequel.

The setting and story flow from the main characters, Salem and Rios, being hired for a simple mission in Shanghai. But, not far into said mission, things go horribly awry. Shanghai comes under attack by the 40th Day Initiative (a loose collaboration of independant mercenary groups) and Salem and Rios find themselves caught in the middle. Surrounded by hostiles, the Army of Two is forced to fight their way out of the besieged city.

The game play and controls are the same as in the original: Salem and Rios employ “agro” (short for aggression) to engage and eliminate hostile enemy forces, leap-fogging from cover to cover as they advance through the level. One complaint that holds true about the controller scheme is that the action button sometimes gets confused due to the convergence of multiple context-sensitive actions. For example, the action button (X on the PS3) is used to flip cover, sprint, drag your wounded partner and heal. On ocasion, when more than one of these contexts suddenly apply to a single location (i.e., your partner gets wounded behind a barricade that you can flip over), performing the action you intended to becomes an exercise in frustration (i.e., instead of healing your wounded partner, you jump over the cover and into a hail of bullets). Too, there are a few areas/fights that are just frustrating as all get out, but once you get past them the game evens out again. Apart from that, the controls, gameplay, mechanics and game physics are all what you would expect in an Army of Two sequel.

The sound and graphics are both top-notch – not once did I ever comment on bad sound or graphics while playing. There were a few poor placements of environmental objects, like flags, park benches or hotdog carts, that tended to block my line of sight unnecessarily, but not too many, on the whole. The environments themselves were well rendered and tended to be a bit more colorful than I (vaguely) remember them being in the original. The character models are good and the greater choices in masks is a plus. One other thing I noticed (and I’ve noticed this in quite a few games recently) is this “rag-doll” mechanic. For example, when you kill an enemy, the corpse goes all floppy like a rag-doll instead of behaving like a corpse that still has the same mass as it did before, just no consciousness controlling it. It’s kind of creepy, really, to see a body flopping around like that as if it were stuffed with silk and every body part had the same mass.

All things considered, though, Army of Two: The 40th Day is a solid sequel and well worth your time, provided you liked the first one. The wife and I really enjoy titles like this; those with good couch co-op. Indeed, we’ve played through the game once and are going back through again on a higher level of difficulty just for giggles. The improvements to the game, like better gun customization, rescuing hostages, and having to make decisions that have moral implications add some new flavors to the sequel that contribute to its success. I would recommend this game if you too enjoy spray-and-pray couch co-op and I give it 8 out of 10.