After months of starts and stops; after EA gave Army of Two the green light (prematurely, it turned out) and sent review builds out to reporters last fall only to subsequently announce that said builds were not actually ready for prime time and that we should disregard them; after more retooling and retweaking; after some speculation among my fellow journalists that EA would dump the IP outright, cancel the game, and cut their losses; after all this, the curtain parts, and Army of Two, easily among the most beleaguered titles in recent memory, tentatively steps into the spotlight.

Ta da.

Nervous as a parent at a ballet recital, I loaded up the review build, quietly rooting for Army of Two in its early moments. Why the emotional attachment? Three reasons: One, I have a weakness for trying to find the good in supposedly damned games; two, I respected EA for realizing the game needed more development time and for tinkering with it for a few extra months rather than pushing yet another piece of crapware on consumers; and three, I'm personally partial to co-op play as opposed to Halo-style kill-them-all-and-let-the-server-sort-them-out Deathmatches.

Around 20 minutes into the game's introductory tutorial, something terrible happened: The Xbox 360 review build crashed on me.

Initial impressions: It looked like this cursed project was still cursed.

The game tells the story of a hyperbolized, war-torn world where the traditional government-run military has been replaced by privately owned and operated teams of mercenaries-for-hire. Unfortunately, these mercenaries have decided to make a grab for power, causing corpse-generating dust-ups in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, China and Miami. Each geographic site functions as a discrete level in the game.

Playing as either Rios or Salem, a couple of square-jawed, bull-necked soldiers who in spirit appear to be second cousins to Gears of War's Marcus Fenix, I was dropped into various war zones and assigned a series of objectives and targets, each worth a specific dollar value. Example: "Eliminate weapons cache for $4,400."

The object of the game, of course, is to use teamwork -- wits, strategy and fire power -- to gain the upperhand against foes. This is generally done by having one member of the team gain the attention of the enemy horde -- shooting blindly from cover usually does the trick -- while the second member sneaks around behind and shoots them while they're distracted.

In the game's vernacular, the one doing the distracting is generating Aggro, the gaming equivalent of waving your arms in the air, letting out a wolf whistle, and saying, ?Woo hoo, bad guys, over here!? The more Aggro one generates -- you'll literally begin glowing red -- the more interested enemies become in you.

This is the core gameplay dynamic of Army of Two: guy number one does the distracting, while guy number two does the sneaking/killing/maiming. Unfortunately, the inherent problem with this dynamic is that generating Aggro, turning yourself into a human bullet-cushion -- in short, being guy number one -- is dramatically less fun than doing the sneaking/killing/maiming, aka being guy number two.

Thus, when playing cooperatively, no matter if I played online or via split-screen, petty arguments inevitably broke out between me and my human partner. Example:

"OK, you do the Aggro this time. Over."

"But I did Aggro last time. Over."

"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.