Review: Army of Two

*This review is based on co-op play only. Single-player play may differ*

If you take Gears of War, mix it with gun customization and throw in a sprinkle of unique features, you get Army of Two. The plot is very much like Hitman: Blood Money where you get sent on a few missions by your employer, and then they turn on you and you need to find out what happened and why. The plot is far more intricate than I initially thought it would have been. It is also executed well, which is a big plus considering how many "unexpected" twists there are. The game is not overly long and it finishes right before the gameplay gets stale.

The one big, unique feature of the game is the aggro system. One person with a big gun shoots a lot and draws the attention of the enemies while the other one sneaks around and shoots them in the side of the head. Most of the levels appear to be designed for this feature to be implemented that way, so sometimes environments feel the same because you use the same strategy consistently. All in all though, the levels are in environments that are unique enough to keep things interesting.

Another unique feature is that you can buy new guns as you progress and customize them to fit your playstyle. The guns are rated in 4 categories: Damage, Accuracy, Ammo, and Aggro. The first three are rather self-explanatory, but aggro is basically the gauge that tells you how quickly you can gain aggro. Some things that attribute to this is mounting a shotgun or grenade launcher to the front of your gun, increasing the barrel size of your gun, pimping out your gun and plating it with gold or silver, or putting a suppressor on to lower aggro.

Every single upgrade drastically effects how the gun works and makes you really feel like the money you spent was worth it and allows players to customize the same gun for completely different tasks. For instance, Aggro guy uses a gold plated M4 with mounted grenade launcher that has 100 round clips and a shield on the front of it while stealth guy uses an M4 with a stock and suppressor the size of the gun itself. Gun customization is implemented well and is something I would like to see in future games.


There are some weird things that happen in the game though. In every firefight there is a moment where you see an enemy is hiding in cover but you can see either the top of their head or their knee poking out from behind cover. However, if you shoot at this exposed part while you are anywhere in a 90 degree cone in front of the enemy, you cannot hit that part of the body. Instead, it looks as if the bullet hits the cover and a puff of white smoke comes out of their leg or head. This gets annoying after you unload an entire clip of Deagle ammo at someone's shins to get no result about a dozen times in the first half of the game.

Also, the third-person viewpoint is very bothersome in some spots. This problem only arises if you are dumb enough to run up to enemies and engage in a close-range firefight instead of just punching them in the face. What happens is that if you are any closer than 10 feet away from a target, all of your bullets go a foot or two to the left of where the reticule is. While this rarely happens, it tends to happen at the most inopportune time. For instance, when you are healing your partner and someone runs up to you, the one getting healed cannot effectively aim and you have to go all the way back to the last checkpoint.

This is another minor gripe I have with the game. The checkpoints in some spots are spread out ridiculously far apart. At some points there are 4 or 5 firefights in between checkpoints, where in others there's simply a hallway to walk through to get another checkpoint. Many fights get very frustrating after beating them and then dying because of an unlucky grenade or a lapse in concentration.

All in all the game is good if you and a shooter-loving friend have 6 hours to kill and you both love gratuitous amounts of violence. Which lucky for me, I have both.

I give Army of Two 3 3/4 out of 5 stars.