I’ve decided to just write informally whatever I think about a game/media whenever I get a moment, rather than waiting to write something formal, which is the only way I’m ever going to get anything done here. So here goes.
(Note: I can’t get the blasted formatting right, so my paragraphs won’t indent. How professional!)
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A few days ago, I picked up EA’s new shooter, Army of Two. This is one I’d been watching in development for a while, and had been patiently waiting for. So to finally get my hands on it, I was more than pleased. Immediately after picking it up, however, I realized that I didn’t have anyone around who would want to play with me that evening. My first night with Army of Two would be solo. However, starting up immediately with the computer, it didn’t take long to discover some of the strengths and weaknesses of playing without another person. These, I believe, are key to the single player game.
For those unfamiliar, this is a game wherein you play as one of two main characters who are always together. Private military contractors, they must engage in real teamwork to get through the game’s missions. This teamwork brings us to a new feature the game brings: aggro. Straight out of an online RPG, aggro is the amount of attention that you are receiving from game enemies. This works in Army of Two by allowing one player to create a distraction that allows the other player to flank enemies virtually unnoticed. This is key to much of the game, especially when given enemies who can only be damaged from behind (which , honestly, feels like a cheap way to force you to use the aggro system).
Thus, playing with a computer, as you might imagine, requires more nuanced control of your AI partner than many team-based shooters might. Your command options for him are: Advance, Hold Position, and Regroup. Each command has a defensive (blue) mode and an offensive (red) mode, so you can choose fairly specifically what you’d like your partner to do. This sounds fine in theory, and about 8o-85% of the time it works fine. Unfortunately, there are times when it feels like, no matter what you do, you cannot get your partner to actually follow through. You will be attempting to flank an enemy while your teammate, without explanation, decides to stop firing altogether and crouch in a corner. Frustrating, indeed. A good majority of the time, though, he does a good enough job, even of dragging you to cover when you are injured. There are a number of small glitches in his character that could be nitpicked, but the truth is, most of the time, he is a better teammate than a human would be. He’s just not really fun, or interesting to play with. This is what makes the single player in this game fall slightly short of the mark, however as a single player game only I would still give it about a 6.5 or above. Though honestly, at this point in my first review, I’m still not sure what scale I’ll be grading games on, so… don’t hold me to that.
Fortunately, it gets even better. With another player, this game gets significantly better. It’s like playing co-op Gears of War and actually talking strategy frequently, rather than just laughing at the carnage together. In almost every scene, unless playing on a difficulty below your range, you and your teammate will need to come up with ways to move through. Even when it is simple strategy, it keeps you and your teammate communicating. Even if one of you is just going to run across a battlefield to press a button, you still have to make that clear to your teammate before you try it, so he can cover you. Because he will have to cover you. Lots of games talk about making players work together, but most degrade into masturbatory showoffery, everyone for themselves. This is a game that will make you work together, for real. Example: I have been having issues with my headset in this game for some reason, and so I can only actually communicate with my teammate on the menus and pause screens. So at the beginning of levels, after I have been able to talk to this person, I enjoy myself immensely. For the first short moments, it’s all good, and we get things done. But when the mics have been out for a few moments, everything degrades into random shooting and advancing by all involved, and we inevitably get our asses handed to us over and over again. You even begin to feel uncomfortable when you can’t talk to the other person. Your digital life depends so much on how the two of you work together that you feel a need to maintain radio contact. As a split-screen co-op, it works great, though. You can easily come up with strategies on-the-fly, and if not, you can see what the other person is doing on their screen to get an idea of what you could to do complement their actions. It truly comes together here. In the midst of an intense fire-fight, there is nothing else that can quite replicate dragging a fallen friend out of the depths of a truly violent hell to safety so you can get him back on his feet, all the while both of you are firing at enemies who you can barely see from their cover… it’s great. I can’t recommend it enough. If it were all this intense, it would be an easy 10. But unfortunately, there are elements that are not quite so satisfying…
The characters, while entertaining, do come off as a bit… uh… douchey. In a life-or-death situation, I find it hard to take my teammate seriously when he’s wounded and spouting things like “Dude bro dude you gotta help me bro! Wu Tang for life!” Er, maybe not that douchey, but it can feel like it. This is the same way I felt about what I played of Skate, and the announcer from Burnout: Paradise. Someone is trying too hard to make a videogame appeal to teenagers with its “hip” characters, who are dope, and sick, and fly, and mildly retarded. All that good stuff. Sorry, EA, but not too many people actually really identify with this… or do they?
The controls are fairly tight for the most part, although the camera/aiming system feels like it has some real acceleration issues. Aiming, intentional or not, can be quite difficult, especially against moving targets. However, when you get the hang of it, the kills come on fast and intense and can be extremely gratifying. One control that I don’t care for at all is the use of the L3 button to crouch. What the fudge? This is something that took a really long time to get the hang of, and is probably going to mess me up in other games. Why can’t games with similar controls come up with some standards, so we can all get better at them? The ways the game works the Sixaxxis motion-control functions into the game are, in fact, some of the most appropriate uses I’ve seen yet. Most games try to overuse the motion-sensing functions, and it just doesn’t work. The PS3 is not a Wii. This game, though, lets you use it to reload (you can also use Square, but it’s more fun this way, actually) by jerking the controller up slightly, which feels natural enough. It also has you controlling your parachute descents by tilting the controller, which also feels pretty natural, mostly because your chute does not need to respond immediately, and it can feel more fluid this way. Bonus points for this.
I feel as if it’s pointless to talk about the graphics in text, because anyone who wants to know what the game looks like can look up a video on GameTrailers.com, YouTube.com, or any number of other websites. Nevertheless, my opinion is that they are about par for the course in terms of the current state of games. They look pretty damn good, especially the water in the aircraft carrier level, but occasionally, when something drastically changes polycount before your eyes, it reminds you that you are watching a slightly tightened version of the new Unreal engine.
What else is there to say?… The camera is usually good and very controllable, though sometimes, waiting by a corner for the camera to slide over to your other shoulder is irritating. Beating on enemies up-close is gratifying, but there should have been a unique button for it. Too often, my guy just ends up shooting randomly at the ground rather than cracking an enemy’s face or clotheslining him (did I mention this is gratifying?). The vehicles (correction, vehicle… just one. The hoverboat.) controls like hell. Customizing weapons is fun and helps a bit, but much of it feels unnecessary (a handle does very little, but pimping your weapon out with gold and diamonds is hilarious). The game has some major glitches. Multiple occasions had me or a friend stuck just apparently out of reach of aid from the other player. We just had to wait for him to die. I also found myself stuck in a spot without being able to move twice, and the game froze my PS3 entirely once in the first hour but not after.
**After a quick hour of play, I have a bit more to say! Huzzah! First, I wanted to mention that the “GPS” system in the game (a blue screen that points arrows on the ground where you’re supposed to run) feels like a blatant coverup of bad level design. If the things I was supposed to do LOOKED important, then I would never need to check my arrows. Unfortunately, I end up checking them all the time, because the large, bright yellow knob in the middle of the level isn’t what I’m supposed to interact with. The thin, dark gray, secluded-in-a-corner, obscured-in-the-shadows lever is what I’m actually supposed to find. Good thing I had my GPS to tell me, or else the game designers might have had to *gasp* think about level and objective design. And this isn’t an isolated incident, these sorts of things pop up a lot. I would never know what I’m supposed to do if I didn’t have a GPS screen where it blinks and glows. Why don’t the important things just blink and glow in the normal game world? It would make as much sense as the characters glowing red or becoming invisible to represent aggro levels.
**When the AI won’t do what you want it to do… wow. Who was testing this game? In the last scene I just played, I had to open a door. Simple, right? Most doors in this game take two people to open (conveniently), so if your teammate refuses to help, you’re screwed. And so, for some reason, my AI teammate decided he’d rather run away from me and down some stairs than help me open the bloody door. I eventually shot him until he fell, dragged his injured body over to the door, and healed him there, so that maybe he would stay and help, since he was going to be there anyway. Nay!! As soon as I patched him up, he ran right back to the other side of the level. I don’t know what the hell my recourse is for this situation. Luckily, I’m not grading this game very much from the single-player standpoint, as it is truly meant for “couples” ;)
**I would like to see some more interesting enemies. The enemy AI isn’t bad at all, but they’re all pretty standard enemies. The suicide bombers are a hilariously twisted addition, though. Bosses are meaningless and their battles do not add ANYTHING new to the game.
Army of Two is a mostly solid, if not exactly content-packed, two-player experience that delivers the kind of intense mercenary bloodbathery you would expect from a modern third-person shooter. Difficulties feel appropriate, controls are good except for some minor aiming issues, and the story keeps the game going well enough. With two players, this game exceeds at creating an opportunity for communication, and with a single player, it functions well enough to keep you playing all the way through once, but that’s probably about it. With friends, I see a great place for experimentation with strategies in repeated runs.
Overall…………..
7.0
