Bro-tastic fun, fist bumps and star jumps. Army of Two: The 40th Day adds to the story’s of character’s Rios and Salem. Once more they seem to be in the wrong place and the wrong time…unlucky!

The Sequel to 2008’s Bro-tastic Army of Two see’s itself in The 40thday. Salem and Rios return for yet more adventure to keep us all entertained. Lets Fist-bump to that sha’ll we?

EA Montreal return to development once more to continue Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem’s crazy antics! Although is it really what we’ve wanted to ‘co-op-bro-out’ about. (Overuse of the word ‘Bro’ is fine in this context…)

Story – 7

Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem return once more to save the underground military from spending way to much money, It would seem that it only should take 2 people to get the job done. You and your ‘buddy’ can have a whale of a time shooting stuff while listening to ‘hilarious’ banter between the two.

The Story is based in shanghai during the moments when, quite literally, the ‘shit hits the fan’. Shanghai has been hit by some form of outlandish terror attack which has completely destroyed the entire city. Your stuck in the middle of it and you’re trying to get as far away as possible. As for ‘The 40th Day’ this is something which is explained via the game’s radio logs (Inserts which you pickup throughout the campaign – slowly but surely everything gets explained).

The game sadly doesn’t push a gripping story on you, you just watch cutscene after cutscene of stuff blowing up…after a while you just find yourself yawning and having to put up with the 2 Butch men shouting a lot.

My problem has to be with the 2 main characters, now this might be enjoyable for some but I find the written work completely cheese-ball awful. When I play a game to shoot stuff I don’t want commentary off some American Berk. I might as well be playing with the members of G-Unit themselves, where’s Fiddy when you need him? Oh yeah, right, dead somewhere. It just makes me want to drown in a pool of my own celestial hate. Some may enjoy this, I don’t.

“Sequel?”

Gameplay – 7

If you played the original you’ll know exactly how the sequel plans to go down, more fist bumping. You can even go about playing a relaxing game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Great right? Well not really, I don’t need to go about playing virtual Rock, Paper, Scissors; That’s basically like the game telling me that I’ve actually got no physical friends and that the rest of the world would prefer it if it stayed that way, Thanks EA Montreal.

On a lighter note, apparently Salem and Rios have gained emotional brains, I believe it’s something to do with the intense amount of steroid usage wearing off, aren’t we glad!

There are moments in the game where you are approached with the option to do something good which will lead to morality and smiles all round or to do something bad, which generally leads to the death of someone\something and a heap load of cash in your back pocket. These moments don’t feel natural to the game’s already over the top bro-tastic ambience ‘don’t give a f***’ realisation, therefore realising that the characters themselves don’t really care, then this turns likewise to the player.

Technology has been shipped to the guys via their masks, Salem and Rios can now drop some sweet sweet hardware while they are in battle. A Tactical HUD allows you to spot out enemies and civilians you need to be taken care of\saved. This works really quite well although not implemented to the best of uses, tagging enemies and then watching your team-mate shoot them straight in the face tends to not really get old.

Customization returns with a rather big bang. The menu is accessible instantly during quiet combat and allows you to spend some of your hard earned cash on more weaponry (Assault Rifles, SMGs, Pistols, Snipers and Tactical Weaponry) as well as kitting them all out with scopes, stocks, mags, silencers (Including a “Soda Can!”), Bayonets and of course the styling option – Check out the first look for some amazing Vegas colours.

Actions in battle can be a little traitorous with the games ‘cover system’. The ‘A’ button when pressed correctly will run you into cover, as well as: fistbump, run, jump over, select stuff, remove you from cover and a handful of more options under the same button. You can therefore understand that the game’s ‘cover system’ is a little broken and turns you into more of a bullet hole than anything else.

Agro also returns as the swinging bar of joy and survival, although it still has the presence of many of the games problems. When upgrading your weapon, don’t care about the damage rating because as long as your gun creates close to 0 agro then your basically invisible. When the agro has swung the other way your character then glows a bright blue, allowing you to sneak up for the flanking attack, maybe even stand right next to the enemy, maybe even stroke his beard in that way he likes it done? (just have a conversation with the guy!) Only when you’ve let the shot off will something actually happen between you and him, and most probably that means he’s a dead man already, good job commander!

Graphics – 6

Graphically this game doesn’t stand out amongst the crowd, it just sits into the current crowd nicely much like a sea of red at most football matches. Although what The 40th Day does do is blow stuff up, we are big fans of things which blow up.

Shanghai’s terrorist attack is presented rather explosively – as expected. Most cut-scenes involve the unlucky helicopter pilot accidentally flying into a building, these guys really should learn to fly under pressure!

Problems occur on the Anti-aliasing front, for those people who understand the logistics of AA you may find yourself being violently sick most of the time. Jagged ages lie naked in front of your eyes and look rather dangerous, don’t touch them.

Overall the graphics look very dull, although the game has several great cut-scene sequences this doesn’t reflect on the environments which you have been travelling through. All the standard generic looks repeat throughout, my personal favourite being the ‘Generic Electricity Switch’ which it seems every company in Shanghai has acquired.

Multiplayer – 5

As ever the game is made so your supposed to enjoy the experience with your buddy, otherwise you have to deal with an A.I character which this time around is much smarter that the game’s predecessor. He’s take a bit of fire on Normal difficulty and we found him a little less hardcore on hard, It’s then down to you to take the helm.

Online modes have there own problem. The games we’ve attempted to join during review have been quite the laggy disgrace which sometimes is Xbox Live. The game’s pace is 5x slower online – now this may be the game’s latency problem or just how it’s supposed to be. The experience now just feels like a complete waste of time, It could of been great, we wanted some hilarious fist-bumping version of Uncharted 2…sadly not this time.

• Co-op Deathmatch pits teams of two against other partnerships.
• Control awards points to teams for capturing and defending randomly spawned points.
• Warzone has players battle over various objectives, much like Killzone 2.
• Extraction is a game mode where teams of four fight waves of increasingly powerful enemies in order to progress through areas of a map with the goal of reaching an extraction point.

The game modes are rather varied and have a great premise, sadly it doesn’t come together and it’s definitely a big miss.

The 40th Day may just be the end of Rios and Salem. If you enjoyed the first game then there is definitely some fun in the sequel for you, just make sure your ready for a half-finished experience. Although if you enjoyed something like 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, what are you waiting for?

January 19th, 2010 Posted by Thrungus | PlayStation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360 Tagged under | Army of 2: The 40th Day, EA, review, Written Comment on This Post | Comments (0) Discuss this Post | On the XG:Forum

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