Army of Two
Posted 10/19/2007 at 3:39pm
| by Dan Stapleton
In Army of Two, you and your partner start out as U.S. Army Rangers, wearing fatigues and taking orders like good soldiers while tackling a Somali warlord. But by the beginning of the second mission — an off-the-record parachute-drop into a former Soviet missile base in Afghanistan now infested with Al-Qaeda scumbags — you’re working for a mercenary organization (think Blackwater meets WWE). You’re dressed like Jason from the Friday the 13th movies, accountable to no one, and out to make a fortune while saving the world in the process.

The entire game is designed to be played by two people in co-op (or one with an A.I. buddy). The first thing the game calls to your attention is the “aggro meter,” which lets you know who the enemies are focused on. The idea is for one guy to create a distraction by laying down suppression fire, causing all the enemies in the area to aggro on him. The other guy is then effectively invisible, and can move around to the bad guys’ flank for an easy (and sometimes necessary, in the case of armored enemies who can be injured only from behind) kill. The system works like a charm in the preview build we played — setting our A.I.-controlled partner Rio to take cover, hold position, and open fire let us run around and knock down groups of enemies like bowling pins.

We encountered a couple of other two-player–oriented features, like when Rio and our dude found ourselves surrounded and automatically shifted into “back-toback mode” for a 360-degree slow-motion terrorist shooting gallery. There are also several traps we had to disable by simultaneously sniping two targets, and vehicles that one guy drives while the other mans the gun. We’ve been hoping Splinter Cell’s co-op mode would be given the full-game treatment for a while now, and this may be the next best thing. Indeed, you might want to start adding some more people to your friends list now, because Army of Two is going to be twice as much fun when played as a pair.