Summary:

Army of Two centers around a fictional depiction of a not-to-distant future where the U.S. is debating the effectiveness, benefits, and drawbacks of the privatization of military and armed forces services.  A few of these private Blackwater-type companies have earned more and more business from the government, and one such company has a mysterious controversy brewing.   The game depicts the story of 2 of mercenaries that are under employment of this private military company, and the chaos that ensues.

The story is fairly intriguing, however there are some avenues of gameplay that hint at parts of the story that are never explored, leaving me to believe that the game shipped unfinished (for those who have played the game, the level with the toxic gas, for example).  There are also some blatant anti-army undertones of this game, which I found a bit odd.

Single Player and Overall Gameplay: ★★☆☆☆

Believe it or not, I had expected less from this game (there were a lot of delays and rumors surrounding its development, with much speculation that the gameplay was horrible, etc.), and was pleasantly surprised.  The overall gameplay can be pretty fun, mostly due to some intelligent enemies that can keep you engaged through various levels.  The AI is probably the best part about Army of Two.  Enemies will run and take cover, try to flank you, and generally just aren't THAT stupid, which is refreshing.  It isn't all roses though, this game is co-op oriented, and if you don't have a buddy to play with, you are stuck with the computer who doesn't really help you all that much.  He does enough to make the game playable, however, and aside from some wonky animation and hit detection, the game is mostly enjoyable as a single player experience.  The controls take a little getting used to.  It's a cross between Rainbow Six: Vegas and Gears of War.  There isn't a true cover system however, so you'll kind of have to get used to the way cover works (ducking, essentially, combined with blind fire, etc.).

What holds the game back is the rather repetitive nature of the levels.  You fight the same exact enemies throughout the entire game, with the occasional boss character.  The only difference between a boss character and a regular one, is that a boss character is basically invulnerable from the front, so you have to flank behind the boss to kill it.  If you manage to get behind a boss character, he will die in basically a single blow, or with just a few rounds from your gun.  There are some tense moments however, and how the AI behaves during these scenarios makes them pretty fun, but unfortunately, these moments are few and far between.

The game is fairly easy, and it is more of the environments, crappy camera, and wonky hit detection that make for the most challenging aspects of the game.  Army of Two tries to spice things up a bit with some driving levels and parachuting, but in reality, these feel gimmicky and tacked on at the last minute.  While parachuting can be kind of fun, the driving levels are complete time-wasters and have no substance at all (and are also marred by horrible controls).  Most of the game is spent running from cover to cover, having your partner create a distraction as you flank enemies from the side.  Killing baddies has a satisfying feel though, so it is enjoyable for the most part.

The biggest problems that surface with gameplay are the odd moments when you have to do something that involves a pre-canned animation to solve a puzzle.  Whether it is turning on a power generator, or using the stupid gimmicky step-up move, where one guy gives the other help to get to a higher platform, sometimes the animation just doesn't work out.  You wind up backing up and trying over and over again until it works.  It's just not smooth sometimes.

Also, the game feels like you are playing in slow motion.  Nothing moves quickly.  Your character may look like he is running, but believe me, he would lose on the kindergarten field if there were a race.  Enemies run even slower, almost like a John Woo movie, only this isn't bullet-time, its real-time.

What is also lame is that one of the games touted features, the back-to-back shooting (a bullet-time kind of mode where you are back-to-back with your partner, shooting all the baddies around you), cannot be enacted at any time.  You can only do this mode when the scripted action of the level calls for it.  This kind of sucks, as it is one of the major features of the game.  I thought that maybe you'd be able to build up a certain level of juice to trigger this mode, or maybe get a special power up where you can use this when you get in a jam, but no.  You can only do back-to-back when the level forces you to do so.  Lame, but it doesn't matter much because this feature is pretty retarded anyway.

There are other gimmicky features that you can use at any time you wish, such as co-op sniping.  Co-op sniping is nothing more than you and your buddy both sniping with a sniper rifle, only this "feature" let's you see what your buddy is aiming at, in addition to your own scope.  WTF?  Stupid.

Another annoying aspect of the game is the camera.  It is aimed down and at your (rather large) character, showing his whole body, and not much else beyond it.  It isn't a wide-angle type of viewpoint either, so basically its very hard to see the environment around you.  You constantly are scrolling around your big fat character as you try to see who is shooting at you from 100 yards away.  Note to EA, if you are going to do a 3rd person perspective, use OVER THE SHOULDER cameras... (like Gears of War, for instance).

The worst part of the game however is the stupid frat boy scripted dialogs and constant football locker-room ass-slapping feel that the characters exude.  I am by no means a posh and proper pansy, but you can't help but feel stupid playing this game.  Every other word is "shit" or "asshole" just for the sake of saying "shit" or "asshole".  The script was clearly written by a D-list reject writer who couldn't hold a candle to even a Jerry Bruckheimer movie script.  Yes it is that bad.  I almost want you to buy the game just so you can laugh at how bad it is.  Here is a typical dialog (but believe me, the game dialog is MUCH worse and even more stupid):

Douchebag #1:  "Hey bro, help me out bro."

Douchebag #2:  "Ok bro, whatever you say.  SHIT!  What the fuck is all that?"

Douchebag #1:  "I don't know bro, but who gives a shit, that's what were paid for right?  Quit yer bitchin."

Douchebag #2:  "Shit-yeah bro..."

Yes, it makes no sense, and yes, "bro" is every other word in this game.  It even occurs more frequently than "shit".  What really bothers me is I couldn't turn off the foul language.  I love foul language as much as the next guy, but in this game it exists just for the sake of trying to look cool, and has no weight, bearing, or meaning on what the characters are actually talking about.  It's like EA was just trying to look cool by throwing curse words in.  Good job EA, you even manage to screw up campy dialog.  I felt like a bit of my soul was being chipped away with every line of dialog in this game.  I'll never get those bits and pieces back, either.

Oh yeah, the game is short.  Very short.  Even shorter than Gears of War.  I beat the whole thing in about 8 hours, and that is taking my sweet time.  I think you can do it in 4 or 5 if you don't run into any wonky camera or animation problems (which you will, of course).

Multiplayer: ★★☆☆☆

Multiplayer is really lame.  I would have given this game one star for multiplayer if it weren't for the co-op aspect of the game.  The game was designed from the ground-up to be a co-op game, and I love and respect that.  But once you beat the co-op campaign game with your buddy, there isn't any variety after that.  Multiplayer gaming (outside of the campaign co-op) is basically the exact same thing as the single player experience, only you are competing against another team for the most contract earnings.  

So basically, in Xbox Live multiplayer, you have 2 teams of 2, and your team is walking through a level killing baddies and hitting other objectives to earn money.  The other team is doing the same thing (on the other side of the map, usually).  Whichever team earns the most money, wins.  It may be interesting in principal, but in practice it's fucking lame.  You'd think there would be some modes of play that focused on shooting the other team, maybe keeping them pinned down while your team-mate goes and gets contract money... but no, this scenario rarely happens.  Quite often you won't even see the opposing team during the match.  It's all just very boring, and you might as well just play the campaign over and over again and try to get all the game achievements instead.  I guess that explains why I found very few players playing online as well.

One other problem was the lag.  It wasn't a network-related lag either, as far as I could tell.  There was a general lag just moving the camera around your character, like the game's graphic engine was struggling to render everything.  Swooping the camera around your character to see the environment around you was painfully laggy at times, and would lead to over-correction which just made the pain that much more pronounced.  I don't know why this graphic-lag exists, but the multiplayer was so crappy I didn't bother to try to figure it out.

One positive is that I wasn't greeted with a giant EA contract when I first launched a multiplayer game, so that is good.  Maybe EA is learning?  Naw, probably not.  The multiplayer part of this game was probably too shitty for them to even bother.

Graphics:  ★★☆☆☆

I'd like to give a better graphics score but I can't.  Your character model looks fantastic, but everything else is very bland.  Some standard permanent-sunset HDR lighting in the game looks pretty good, but other than that the remaining game models and especially the levels consist of relatively low polygon counts and really bland textures.  It doesn't look bad, but for a 3rd or 4th gen Xbox 360 game, it should look better.

Sound/Soundtrack:  ★★★☆☆

The sound is pretty good.  Bullets whizzing by, RPGs flying by your head, they sound great and make wonderful use of Dolby Digital encoding.  Surround sound is your best friend in this game, because believe me, the camera won't show you where you are taking fire from.

The problem with this game is there just isn't enough variety.  There are hardly any environmental sounds, etc.  Just bullets and guns.  Not bad, but not great either.  It just doesn't have the sound immersion of say, Rainbow Six: Vegas.

As far as soundtrack is concerned, there are some nice Bruckheimer-esque orchestral moments toward the end of levels, but other than that, nothing.

I'm both surprised and thankful EA didn't include the usual montage of 909 area code shit-metal that would both exemplify and complement the frat-boy dialog the script is littered with.  Maybe EA has a soul after all?

Overall: ★★☆☆☆

The game is decent enough to play once, either with a buddy or without.  But other than that, it has no longevity whatsoever, and it has enough annoyances that you won't want to play it more than a couple of times after you beat it.  Unless you are dying for a video game version of the crappiest straight-to-VHS action movie ever created, I'd pass on Army of Two.

 If you don't believe me, ask Yahtzee.