The first part, for my mom:
We’re watching Lois and Clark Season 3 “We have something to talk about”. Lois is doing jumping jacks on a fitness pad and a terrorist has rigged up a bomb to blow up if she stops. The terrorist radios in taunts. Then Clark is at a mafia party where a bomb can sense his dense structure and will blow if he moves.
My thoughts? An early version of Wii Fit complete with Balance Test.
On to The Two:
My brother and I just finished Army of Two. Great graphics where you can see your masked sociopath headbutt crunch a suicidal bomber. And you’re controlling the character the whole time.
Lots of customization. I added a longer stock to the sniper rifle and more ammo to my .44. My brother, on the other hand, paid to have his AK-47 gold plated.
The best part of the game is the Aggro meter, where it measures who is the baddest and grabs the attention of the baddies the most. Our strategy? I fire randomly, laying down true suppressive fire, while my brother sneaks around and wreaks havoc. And there’s no hit points. Instead, your screen will get hazy and then go red and then go white as you slowly die. But your partner can drag you to safety for field medicine. The injured can still fire while being dragged.
Lots of fun. But here are the negatives:
- Very short storyline. 6 missions, but they go by very quickly. This is not Metal Gear Solid.
- Not too much replay value. Yet. We immediately started a new campaign to try out new weapons (a chaingun for me, a platinum grenade launcher for my brother) but it’s real tough to be accurate and accuracy is key or you’ll be hearing a lot of, “Tyce! I’m hit! [expletive][expletive] save me!” This is the game to set aside and then come back to for just all-around psycho firepower.
- On top of short missions, the storyline is weak. There’s a huge conspiracy but it’s already solved in the instruction manual. I guess they forgot I actually read the manual. No joke, from the manual. “Every mission that Dalton organizes you get ambushed. Isn’t this suspicious?” I expected more pathos from antisocial mercenaries.
The game’s fun and there are some cool new takes on the shooter concept. Aside from the short, ridiculous storyline, it was worth it. We did go for secondary objectives, which add storyline and money. “I found this briefcase. Not only is a villain here, but this is info on his training camp.” I appreciate that. The back-to-back two guys surrounded by fifty villains firefight option is cool. We did not do the gun swapping, nor did we really utilize the “we just blew up a town, air guitar!” feature (press ‘X’ next to your partner). Nor did we use the, “Tyce, let’s co-op snipe!” mode. (Yeah, they say that in the game.)
But we did snipe together independently. You know how Metal Gear and Rainbow Six made popular the shaky scope with heavy breathing?
Now imagine heavy breathing after running in heavy armor with a metal mask on your face. Those are some interesting sounds. My brother describes it best.
“Most awkward prank phone call ever.”
