Army of Two for XBox 360When 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.

Story

At this point I've played through the first few levels of AoT and while there are a few annoying issues with the game itself I'm happy to say that the story isn't that bad. Like most 80's buddy cop movies there's a semblance of a plot that's entertaining. It may not be original but it's entertaining.

You begin the game as part of a two man Spec Ops team. The first mission serves two goals - first off it's clearly a training op for the player. While you do have a training course before this one you'll constantly be stopped with more special instructions concerning how to work as a team. The mission also serves as a bit of back story involving another operative, who I'm assuming you'll end up meeting again later in the game, and his relationship with an independent military contractor group (i.e. mercenary group) who you end up joining.

The game then flashes forward several years to the attack on the World Trade Center. After an apparent lull in the mercenary business you and your team-mate are tapped to go back to work. In the first two missions you'll be responsible for rescuing other members of your group and then carrying out extra objectives that arise as you progress. While the game basically avoids naming anyone of the real players in the conflict it does place you in Afganistan and Iraq right off the bat.

The dialog between the main characters is definitely fun but the presentation is hampered by poor subtitling. When a character says something and it appears as a subtitle 5 seconds later it's distracting. More offensive though is the use of a secondary character who is apparently a hacker who doesn't speak.

This character, s3kShUn8, is portrayed through subtitles that fly on and off the screen, are written in "l33t" and which are virtually unintelligible. It's not that their indecipherable - it's just they move so fast you can't read them.. Worse yet - despite the lack of any sound Rios, your character, immediately recognizes every word and doesn't really disclose what it was.

Despite this the back and forth dialog between the games two main leads is definitely fun. You'll be snickering a long with them plenty and cursing just as much as you are overwhelmed or pinned by the enemies superior firepower.

It's sad that there's relatively little variety in this dialog but what can you do?

Since I've only played through the first three main levels there's still a bit of a question as to what exactly is going on. We're definitely led to believe there's a traitor turning over the team's secrets but we've yet to collect any helpful details.

While the gameplay is repetitive this is shaping up to be a good rental.

Once I've finished the game I'll check back in with a full review.