THE original Army of Two game is not a title I had the pleasure of playing.
Judging by the complete ambivalence shown by peers who had, I don’t think I missed out on too much. Too contrived, too brainless and too ultimately pointless. To paraphrase one friend of mine, Ao2 was a game for idiots. Harsh, but everything they described to substantiate their claim sounded like exactly the kind of thing I could have predicted from such a game.
The idea of the Ao2 series is that you control one of two ex-army meatheads, now working as that old favourite video-game cliche: private military contractors. Too maverick to play to international treaty rules, they operate isolated from the real world to whoever pays them the most. Yawn.
Curiously, despite the critical lambasting the first game in the series went on to sell over a million copies. I’d estimate around 99.9 per cent of these were sold in the States, where they love big, brash, dumb shooters, but it goes to show that sometimes the reviewers get it wrong. It’s all very well judging a game by its technical merits or graphical prowess, but the relative success sales-wise of Ao2 shows that sometimes people just want stupid fun.
Ao2: 40th Day knows the critics didn’t like it. It knows its predecessor was that big argumentative kid at school, who picked fights and never endeared itself to the teachers. How does it improve that for the sequel? By scaling it all up and making everything massive. Less than five minutes in and you’re treated to the sight of a terrorist atrocity. A huge passenger plane smashes into the side of a building, explosions go off everywhere and Shanghai is in flames. Luckily, Salem and Rios (the two meatheads) arrive in town, under contract to get to the bottom of this horrible mess.
The format is simple. It’s a cover based third-person action shooter, with the emphasis on two player co-op. The ubiquitous Unreal 3 engine ensures a highly polished game, although I did find the controls somewhat sluggish especially when compared to a twitchfest like Modern Warfare. There are decent levels of Lego-style customisation on offer in the shape of weapons, and I liked the idea of the masks your goons wear displaying vital information. There is also evidence of a ‘morality’ system of sorts, although we’re not talking Heavy Rain levels of soul-searching here. The scale I mentioned earlier is impressive; watching a plane career towards the building you’re trying to escape from is undoubtedly exciting. Nolan North shows up yet again to provide sterling voice work, although I suspect by now people are getting pretty fed up of him. I certainly am.
Speaking of Heavy Rain, the differences between Quantic Dream’s slow-burning masterpiece and this couldn’t be more stark. Like the record collector with albums by both Philip Glass and Pig Destroyer, these two examples of contemporary gaming sit at polar opposites on the spectrum. There is a place for both, but they likely won’t be next to each other on the shelf.
The Ao2 series is destined to go down in gaming folklore. To its credit, it is not a series I can see wilting and dying any time soon. Those who go out of their way to buy things like this will view it with a certain fondness. However, if cretinous shooter games are not your sort of thing, this game won’t change your mind any time soon.
3/5