"A fun game, but gets old 'two' quickly"

First off, throughout this whole game, I wonder who in their right mind did the writing. Are we playing as two pros capable of completing missions or are we playing two incompetent frat boys in gorilla masks? You'll find out later on, but the thing about this slightly above average, yet hyped shooter wasn't its rather mediocre story or corny writing, the quirky little gameplay mechanics became more of an annoyance than actually working out.

Graphics:

The graphics look pretty nice here with the magic of the Unreal Engine 3. However, it's nothing I haven't seen before, and I've seen way better this generation. However, a feel complaints include textures looking quite bland and the environment looking entirely monotonous. The character models are detailed, and the CG sequences between gameplay do look nice, however, I've seen better CG on the PSP, to be quite honest.

8/10

Story:

The story is a quite generic and boring one. It's quite awful and I have absolutely no idea why they want to force this on us. The story follows the bland adventures of TWO men - a big, bad "tough guy" by the name of Rios, and a young "pretty boy" by the name of Salem. You first start out working for the US Army who are dissatisfied and become guns for hire. Nothing special, as they soon face all of the "baddies" all around the world. It's bad enough that the story isn't anything special and is just plain bland, it's the fact that they can't make us skip their cutscenes. I usually find myself groaning whenever these CG sequences start, they just aren't interesting and are quite long to boot. Not to mention in gameplay, when the two start acting like immature frat boys. The dialogue here is usually out of place and ridiculous at times, one second they're talking about making bets on a football game, the next they're talking about conspiracy theories. Also, their interactions include giving a high fives in which they exclaim: "Up top bud." "Yeah, you da man!" And even worse when they also start breaking out an air guitar with their guns "De ne ne de ne ne."

4/10

Gameplay:

At first it begins really interesting, teaching you a few new gameplay mechanics emphasising heavily upon teamwork.

One mechanic is known as Aggro. This means that one person who does all of the firing, the enemies will somehow only fire and focus on him, and you become somewhat invisible in their eyes. Here, you can sneak around enemies and shoot them from behind stealthily. However, it sounds better than it actually works. The levels just aren't designed for this. Most of the time, when you use this system, you can only walk straight up to them as various environmental barriers prevent you from sneaking. However, the majority of the time, it's better to shoot from cover using blindfire.

Another mechanic includes healing. Once your health is down to a certain point, you are restricted to sitting on the ground while the only hope is your friend and a 10 second pat on the back from him. However, your friend has to drag you to a safe place in order to do this, or else gunfire would interrupt this healing "pat" process. With a friend, this works well, however, playing with the AI is just laughable. Don't expect the AI to drag you to the closest, strategic place though.

The cover system, like every third person shooter now, this game utilises. And to be honest, I actually find this new cover system to work out quite well. Your back isn't stuck to some surface, you just have to stay close to the cover. The reticle will automatically adjust, so you won't be shooting at the walls or anything. I find this works real well, as there is a lot of freedom of movement..

The gameplay as a whole, however, gets real old really quickly. There really isn't much variety here, and playing by yourself will make this get even older. There's the occasional boss, but the vast majority of the time is occupied by going to different areas, going behind cover, and shooting anything you see.

7/10

Replayability:

Although the game is quite short, repetitive, and monotonous, it's actually quite fun to play with a friend, which is heavily emphasised here. However, what will make you come back to play it? Sure, you can buy and upgrade new weapons and play at a harder difficulty, but are you willing to shell out 60 dollars for a rather repetitive and short adventure that gives you relatively no reason to come back to play it?

6/10

Rent or Buy:

I think this is definitely a rent. The game although fun at first, really offers nothing relatively new or innovative and gets real old, real quick. The game itself is nothing special, and can definitely be beaten really quickly with little motivation to come back and replay.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/07/08

Game Release: Army of Two (US, 03/06/08)