Army of Two (Xbox 360)

He ain't heavy. He's my well-armed, skull-mask-wearing brother.
3/11/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 2

"No, I did the Aggro last time. Why do I always have to do the Aggro? Over."

"Shut your candy-eater, get into cover, and do your Aggro duty like a good boy, will you? Over."

At this point, a "Three Stooges"-style slap-fest typically broke out between my partner. (Note: The Xbox 360 controller includes a button that allows you to smack your partner around.)

Despite all the positive things the game does -- you can feign death when wounded, and the whirling, back-to-back shootouts, for example, do a better job of paying homage to John Woo's movies than all seven hours of Stranglehold did -- the near-unforgiveable flaw at the heart of the Army of Two experience can be summed up in six words.

Generating Aggro is not much fun.

A less damning flaw is the fact that the game can't seem to decide on a universal tone. You simply can't have Salem and Rios play air guitars in celebration one minute -- yes, they will in fact play air guitars at some point during the game's 10-hour-long campaign, trust me -- and then expect me to feel any tension or drama as I creep through an enemy-infested aircraft carrier the next minute. You simply can't have it both ways, EA.

Also: The word "bro" shall henceforth be stricken from all videogame writer vocabularies. So it is written, so it shall be.

Despite the inconsistent tone, I prefer Army of Two's lighter, more cartoonish attitude towards war than the typically grim, Tom Clancy-style experiences. Example: The game's first boss is a Somali warlord who's equipped with what appears to be a gold-plated AK-47. He wears mirrored aviators and refers to Salem and Rios as "Johnny American."

Credit the many hours I spent playing the Xbox 360-only Gears of War, but the game feels more comfortable on the 360 controller than it does on the PlayStation 3's DualShock. (Gears of War fans: Army of Two has a great deal in common with the Gears of War experience, and even borrows the same sound effect -- that distinctive BOONNNGGGG -- indicating that all nearby enemies have been eliminated.) One quibble: I had a difficult time reading some of the screen fonts on the 360, specifically those mid-mission score cards that appear in the top left corner of the gameplay screen. They are borderline impossible to read, even when viewed in full-on 1080p.

In the end, despite the game's obvious overall polish, despite the imaginative efforts made to build a genuinely cooperative experience, the game still winds up feeling like an experiment more than a bona fide game. Army of Two features some sound ideas; they simply need to be executed with more confidence and conviction, and they need to be part of a larger, more unifying whole. As it stands, Army of Two feels like an early sketch of a new species of game, a new kind of gameplay and possibly even a previously non-existent genre.

Army of Two 2, perhaps?

This review was based on a retail copy of the game purchased by Crispy Gamer.