Army of Two

I was very excited when I purchased this game, it looked fantastic and original. While it does look very good and it is somewhat an original idea, the game flops in it's gameplay length. It took me six hours to complete and there wasn't even a 'final boss' battle. The game came to an abrupt end which can only be described as anti-climatic. The whole thing felt completely unrewarding in the end. I do recall this being £49.99 in my local Gamestation when it was first released and I am happy that I did not pay that for it.

The controls can be a bit fiddly at first but they do not take that much time to get used to but they could be improved in the parachuting sections. There is also an option to 'pimp' your weapons but this is pointless as all the weapons will be unlocked at the end of the game anyway and you could easily use the weapon you start off with all the way through the game. The targeting leaves a lot to be desired. I found it hard to hit a moving target and even harder to hit a target from close range. Still, the game was way too easy and becomes repetitive very quickly. On the plus side, the graphics were very good.

I'm cutting my review short as I've come down with something and I have an extrordinary headache.

Graphics 8/10 Sound 7/10 Gameplay 6/10 Length 1/10 OVERALL 5/10

This game is a bit of puzzler and on one it had its really frustrating on the other it's great fun.

I will just get the bad points out the way first, maybe because I am so annoyed this great game has these stupid flaws. The biggest and most puzzling is if you buy the PAL version of this game you can only play people in the EU!!! why oh why have EA done this. I have friends from all over especially over the pond and for a reason (known only to EA) I cant play with them on it? This stupid decision just limits the number of people you can play with and it does make it hard to find a COOP game. This leads me to another frustrating point, ok I choose to play a coop game and in every other co-op game I would now normally choose to host a Coop game or join one yes? Oh not with army of 2 you just select CO-OP game and it seems to be up to gods wether you carry on in your game or join someone else in theirs.

As other reviews have pointed out the actual online multiplayer mode (versus) is next to useless, before you can even think about looking for a game you need to get another 3 friends in to your game first. As we all know the farce that is PSNetwork does not help you with this, as it has no cross game invites ect. In rectrospect I should have really bought this game on the my 360! but I found 2nd hand on PS3 and bought it. So if you have the choice get the 360 version, as Army of 2's unfriendly online modes out along with PS Network is not a great mix. There other problems too, once again EA are trying to win the shortest game in the world award, well they plenty of competition dont they, with GEARS, GRAW2, COD4 ect all taking less then 5 hours to complete, this worrying trend is driving me mad!. There has also been some complaints the Army of 2 depicts real life events, for example in your second mission your sent to Afganistan to destroy the Taliban because the 911 has just happened, I must say I can see the point of some peoples concerns, and even tho it does not upset me, it may do for some.

Lets not get too heavy tho games are meant to be fun and I am very happy to say Army of 2 is great fun. Army of 2 is great when its doing what it does best the co-op play, when you do find a match you will lose hours of your life. With a mixture of very cool fire fights, pulling car doors off and us them as shields, parachuting into a battle fields, back to back slow mo shootouts its all very, gun ho manly fun. The game makes full use of the Team work aspect of the game play, one great example is if you are wounded you will lay there injured and your partner can drag you to a safe place while you are shooting the remaining baddies from your injured position. The main selling point is the all new AGGRO system, this simple idea works pretty well, the idea is one of you will lay loads of covering fire this will put all the attention (aggro)on you, while your partner can sneaks round and shoots them in the back....cool! As you can see there is loads of fun to be had, loads of weapons you can buy from illegal arms dealers, lots of bonus objectives that can give a good mercenary such as your self plenty of doller to buy said guns.

To sum up if you enjoy co-op shooters that lend more to fun than realism then army of 2 is for you, but if your looking for the next COD4 this is not it. Infact i would liken it most to the great GEARS OF WAR which I still go back and play in CO-OP to this day.

The game itself isn't that bad. For the price it is sold now, it's quite good actually. However the major flaw for me was, that since last year, online multiplayer is no longer supported which is a huge portion of this game in my opinion. You're in fact playing singleplayer as a co-op game with AI partner and while the AI isn't that bad, this game is so much better with real co-op player. So unless you're going to play the game in co-op locally with split screen, there's no other way to enjoy the multiplayer otherwise.

The game is not bad overall - would be a 4 star game for me, but now missing the online portion, which was a huge part of the game I have to take one star down.