Army of Two is a great co-op game from EA that you can pick up with a friend and play either split screen or online. The game tries to push the envelope in the genre by really making the two characters interact with each other in order to finish objectives. The addition of a partner is vital to the gameplay, not like just having more marines in Halo 3 or an extra friend to help you finish Gears of War. Army of Two does a lot of things right and provides a full and unique experience.

Presentation & Graphics:

The presentation in this game is crisp and clean with some nice added effects for water and blood on the camera. The character models are very detailed and you can customize how they look by changing their masks and armor, most of all the weapons are fully customizable and are visibly different when you carry them. There was always smooth gameplay with no choppiness or jaggies. We did encounter a few glitches online where characters would get stuck in certain places, but these were few and far in between. Very solid presentation and graphics from the folks over at EA. 8 of 10

Sound & Music:

Explosions sound great and gunfire is loud and crisp in surround sound, I actually had to turn my sound down a bit at times. Music was a bit light and it could have used a good soundtrack EA style, which I was surprised it didn’t have. The chatter of enemy soldiers is funny at times and actually plays into the game to help you locate where they are. The chatter between the two main characters is funny at times as well, since they constantly argue and curse at each other. Perhaps one of the funniest conversations revolved around who was the best member of Wu Tang clan, this of course occurs during a battle making it even funnier. 7.5 of 10

Gameplay:

The gameplay of Army of Two revolves around teamwork and covering each other’s backs. If you have one guy go in as Rambo, it will be a short mission for you both. There is a lot of strategy to this game and with the new Aggro mechanic and co-op moves this can be very tactical. The aggro mechanic is something new to any shooter, but something that RPG’s typically employ, it is where a character can actually pull the attention of enemies off of others in their party. This works great to flank your enemies and catch them by surprise, basically one character with a big gun that makes a lot of noise (pulls a lot of aggro) will hold a position with continuous fire while the other circles around and gets off some free shots.

Aiming in Army of Two can be a bit wonky at times, but overall is pretty decent. One of the bigger frustrations is when enemies run by you and are difficult to hit or knock you down to the ground. The enemy AI is pretty smart and will knock you down and shoot you while you are on the ground. Your partner AI is not the best in the world, but you can work with it if you put them into an aggressive mode and then flank your enemies.

If you pull enough aggro or attention your character will turn red and after some time you can activate Overkill mode, this allows the player with all the aggro to do double damage, the other player to go into stealth mode so you cant be seen and the enemies to go into slow motion. This mode is useful, but you have to be careful as you can’t switch weapons or crouch in this mode, luckily it only lasts 15 seconds or so.

There is quite a bit of team based moves like helping your opponent climb up to a platform, knocking over or moving doors, driving vehicles, parachuting, etc. Typically one player is in charge of the movements while the other is in charge of firing the weapons. You can use certain objects in the environment as shields, which is fun and useful, when this occurs one guy is the shield holder and the other shoots over his shoulder. There is also a back to back mode that comes up from time to time and allows both character to stand back to back and unleash a barrage of bullets in slow motion. When your teammate is injured to the point they are incapacitated, you can drag them out of the line of fire and then heal them back to full status. There is co-op sniping available, which is a timed snipe to knock out enemies in tandem.

There are quite a few new and intriguing gameplay mechanics that I am sure we will see a lot more of from other shooters. These mechanics are what make Army of Two unique and a fun experience. 8 of 10

Lasting Appeal:

The game is short, since we beat it in a few days on recruit difficulty. There are two other difficulties to play and recruit difficulty is not easy by far. There are a lot of weapons to buy and pimp out, each with different stats, which will be important to balance during certain missions, this will take a few play throughs to acquire and master. The online portion lets you play the campaign with a friend, which is solid and also lets you play versus matches. The versus matches are objective based and based on money, so the team with the most money at the end of the round wins, so it isn’t purely kill based. There is a decent amount of replay value in this game even though it is fairly short and there is a clear indicator that EA plans on making a sequel to this one. 7 of 10

Final Word

Very fun co-op game, especially fun if you have a friend you can play with over Live. Unfortunately the game is pretty short but does give you three difficulties to play on, each very challenging. Army of Two does have a few issues with it, but provides an entertaining fast paced game. Solid co-op shooter game that will provide a lot of fun hours of play.

Overall 8 of 10