Personally I find Coop games pretty hit or miss. Coop games are typically built for two players and concentrate on team based play styles. If a game is specifically built for two players it generally means the single player experience is going to be lacking (usually due to pore team AI) - Gears of War is a notable exception here.

The problem I consistently encounter is finding people to play with. Most of my friends are casual gamers and almost none of them have the expendable income to rent or buy games regularly. That means I play my Coop games single player - which is what this review will be based on, a single player's review of EAs Army of Two.

Story Development and Execution

Characters

In my first impressions post I shared how the game was developing early on. While the story was hardly inventive or original it was certainly as engrossing as about 90% of the buddy cop movies you've ever seen. The two main characters are evenly developed and play off each other nicely. In the single player campaign you take the reigns of Rios a conspiracy minded soldier who's head is in the job but who questions the motives behind everything.

Your partner Salem is a bit less level headed. While he's 100% faithful he's all about the money and cares more about what he's being paid than what he's doing. Even at the end of the game, when you've been betrayed and hung out to dry, Salem is more concerned with collecting bonus objectives than about clearing your name.

The pairing is pretty much a sound setup and while the characters don't develop further than what you're initially shown the player can easily accept the bond between the games titular mercenary "Army of Two."

Plot

At the heart of Army of Two is a grand conspiracy to disable the US' armed forces. Through a series of cut scenes the player is introduced to a political power struggle which revolves around keeping the army together and disbanding it in favor of independent contractors (think Blackwater). As grunts in the field your team is somewhat indifferent - it'd be nice to have a more regular source of income but war is war.

Through your first few missions Rios begins to get the feeling that something isn't right. Time after time the enemy gets a little too close for comfort and more innocent soldiers are dying. His questioning of the mission values ultimately leads to his teams betrayal. As it turns out your company has a lot invested in becoming the sole provider of military power and they've decided you're in the way.

While the front of the game concentrates on completing contracts for SSC the back is all about taking them down and rescuing your handler. There are no glaring inconsistencies and despite being a bit familiar it still manages to entertain.

Presentation

Level Design and Tone

For the most part Army of Two is presented in a pretty solid fashion. Technically the game performs well and with the exception of a few instances of ghosting into objects after being incapacitated there was little to really pull you out of the game.

Greens, browns, grays and other earth tones are used heavily but it's a common complaint about most action games this generation. It's not necessarily a bad thing, in this game or others, but it would have been nice to see a bit more variety. One of my few complaints about how the game was designed, though, isn't in the presentation of any of the different levels but rather in the game's mid-mission and in-mission shopping sprees.

Between each mission, as well as at certain points in each mission, you're given the chance to visit arms dealers in order to stock up, change weapons and even change gear. We'll cover weapon balance shortly - the presentation of these stores left a lot to be desired. For some silly reason Army of Two expects us to believe that your only source of weapons are international arms dealers from around the globe - and they're really specific about what they sell.

One dealer might carry "primary weapons" while another only carries "secondary" ones. What's more annoying is that you're supposedly visiting them DURING your missions even though you're led to believe these dealers are in other parts of the world.

To make matters worse the visits seemed to be (they may not have been but they felt) tethered to certain physical locations. This meant that starting a level would initiate a dialog. Any movement thereafter would then trigger a loading screen that brought you to an interface where you would choose who to buy from and what to buy.

I got tripped up by this several times - it's really inexcusable to follow level loading with pulling the player out of the game just to load an unnecessary shopping interface.

I was also thoroughly disappointed with the off-camera character named s3kShun8. Why introduce a character that no one can hear and who's dialog flies by so fast it's impossible to read? Thankfully Rios always relays the upshot of s3kShun8's speeches so it's not a total loss.

All that aside I think the game itself was presented well enough for most games of it's genre. It's certainly not as cinematic as games like Gears of War but it was still immersive.

Game Mechanics and AI

It's with game mechanics and AI that the game really started to falter. While most levels were well supplied with cover and choke points getting your partner to take advantage of them was a bit difficult. The game offers an OK method of issuing commands but it lacks some of the polish that games like Full Spectrum Warrior and even Republic Commando had.

There are times when you'll tell you're partner to get active and he'll just sit in place (or worse yet be ignored). Similarly there are times you'll call for backup and he'll take the single worst path possible to find you. The aggro system offered by the game (in which you collect aggro in order to make your team-mate less visible) was certainly interesting.

Once gaining a good position you simply become more active, usually by either blind-firing or sniping, and this draws enemy attention. Your partner, meanwhile, is free to move ahead of you and either advance your line or take out enemies that have weak spots in the rear. Of course this means enemies aren't terribly bright either. While you enemy AI is good at finding the best cover they also tend to ignore you sometimes which makes certain areas a bit too easy. It seems as though the designers seemed to balance against that by making certain enemies tougher - not a good balance.

A head shot is a head shot.

Final Analisys

The game is short - very short - which prevents this from getting a buy rating. I can say with confidence that anyone who enjoys third person action games will get a kick out of the title as long as you expect something less than Gears of War.

I enjoyed Army of Two to the point where I'd be interested in sequel but with the caveat that certain changes need to be made. The game could certainly use a little more polish as well as a more developed AI. Having the ability to better control your partner and adopting a different method of gaining weapons would be a real plus. I'd also like to see more done with some of the "emotes" that you get to use.

Because they had no real effect on the game I didn't talk about them here which also means they probably could have been left out or built upon.

In all Army of Two is a great rainy weekend rental but not really worth the full retail price tag.

Castle Crashers is one of those games, like Poker Smash, that I really would love to see on a handheld console.

These games scream "take me with you!"

One of the biggest draws of the game is it's HUGE library of unlockable content. From the 22 characters to the recently announced 40 weapons this game has hidden jewels galore. In a stunning double reveal the folks at behemoth showed off two a new character and new weapon yesterday.

Yes ... that does appear to be a lightsaber.

Personally - I want to see this game on the PSP but if it's only XBL bound I'll probably break and make the purchase. I'm personally calling Castle Crashers one to watch and I'll definitely be searching more about the game as it develops.

When I first saw trailers for Army of Two, close to a year ago, I thought we might finally witness the first really solid "buddy cop" action game to make an appearance in the console market. While there are plenty of humorous pairings in the platformer realm few coop shooters have really embraced the genre that brought us movies like Lethal Weapon.

So yes, I was excited for what Army of Two promised.

While it's too early to really review the whole game I figured this would be a good time to briefly relate the early portion of the game's story. Once I finish the whole game we'll do a full review.

(more...)

Hiro over at Live for Games has released a list of what he considers the Top 20 Nintendo Console Games of All Time.

The list includes a lot of my all time favorite Nintendo Classics but there are clearly a few missing.  Right now there's just the first 10, hopefully the rest will be coming soon - I look forward to seeing how he finishes the list.

Yes, I played Magic: The Gathering in high school. I played in a few tournaments and collected the cards as both a player and as a collector. The problem, of course, was that as a high school student I never really had enough cash to keep up with my habit.

When college came around I dragged a deck with me but I never really got to play again.

Nearly 10 years later I'm psyched to hear that Wizard of the Coast's killer collectible card game Magic: The Gathering will be coming to XBLA. Magic: Online was a solid interpretation of the game but relied too heavily on buying digital boosters and decks - hopefully the same isn't true for the XBLA version.