Great, another shooter for the PS3 and Xbox 360 – just what we need. But hold on a minute, this one actually puts a different spin on a third-person shooter because it’s not just about watching your own back and maybe controlling a squad of other players . This one sees you fighting battles with one wingman, your buddy. You’re like Morecambe and Wise, Laurel and Hardy, Mitchell and Webb – only with guns and scary metal masks!
The game takes place over a 16 year period. The two chareacters Salem and Rios both begin as fresh-faced commandos but soon you’re faced with a montage that shows them age, get battle scars and become meaner than ever before. They’re also not being told the whole truth in the game so as you play, espionage and treachery starts to unfold quicker than Paul Burrell’s web of lies.
As far as combat goes, in this game you not only have to consider a weapon’s strength and range but also its aggro. Managing aggro is what makes the difference between success and failure and it works like this. Fire on an enemy and your aggro will increase. Keep firing and enemies will concentrate their fire on you, allowing your partner to invisibly sneak behind them and pick them off. If you manage to stay in this mode for a certain amount of time you get infinite ammo or, if you’re the one doing the sneaking, you become invisible for a short amount of time, allowing you to go in close and kick some ass with your bare hands!
So, covering your team mate or getting him to lay down fire for you is key to this game and it does change the way you’d play a game of this nature. You move and fire, flank enemies and even swap weapons with your team mate. You can even rip doors off cars to use as shields and parachute from planes, either controlling the chute or showing all the people below the business end of your rifle.
In single player mode this is a fun and a different spin on what would otherwise be a pretty standard shooter. However, you can also play the single-player campaign co-op either online or split-screen or play head to head in deathmatch mode.
This is where the game really shines as you work together to snipe targets at the same time and lay down covering fire for each other as you move through the levels.
The game looks very nice too. The main character models and even the cannon fodder enemies all look great on all platforms and the scenery is rich in detail too.
If you’ve finished playing co-op Gears of War and fancy a new online co-op challenge with a buddy, then this one comes highly recommended. Army of Two gets an excellent 8 out of 10
