What is there to enjoy? What is there to dislike? What about the Mask creator? Let's look.
The writing of this review will assume that you have already played Army of Two (the first game) so I won't go too much into elements that are unchanged.[/i]
One of the major points of interest with AOTTFD is the mask creator function. Pretty cool eh? Design your own mask and take it online to show off your skills. That said, the system really didn't work well for me!
You have to go to their EA site to do it. I had issues of the page containing designs on it taking longer than it should to load, all of the graphical images are bandwidth heavy, it would seem. Then there's the mask creator utility itself which makes you sign in before you can make a mask. So you sign into or create an EA account. Fair enough. But then it said the registration process was a failure and I tried entering all of the info again. Once I hit submit, it told me that the name was already in use yet before it wasn't…then I looked up to see it was saying I was now logged in, along the band at the top.
With that stupid design fault behind me, I hoped that being logged in would let me actually create a mask at last. I was wrong. The mask tool kept loading then disappearing off my screen. Ninety percent crashes was all well and good but the one time it didn't crash I actually thought I was getting somewhere. I was wrong again. This time I encountered the idiotic "add a persona" function. So, logically I chose the Xbox Live Gamertag option and put my gamertag in the space below where it asks for "Existing Xbox Live Gamertag".
When I tried to okay my gamertag as a choice I got the following unbelievable message: Sorry, that Xbox LIVE Gamertag has already been taken. Please try another one.
Seriously? Are they for real? Of course it's taken! It's my Gamertag! It does ask for an "Existing" Gamertag after all. Any Existing Gamertag is by nature, "taken"…
The only way I even got it working in the end was to change my I.D. to my EA one…
Even then, the damned thing took me to my account page, not to the mask creator. I just want to create a mask, guys. Come on!
Just so we're clear, there's no mask creator link on that account page.
Most other websites are smart and automatically load up the thing you were originally looking for. Not this though, and trying to find the page you need again isn't overly easy within their site. Even when you do navigate their site via search, you the end up with a load of videos about the game to watch. I don't want to watch videos, I have the game now, thanks. I want my mask and armour creator, damn you EA!
Then further down the page you'll see a link at last to their actual game website…
This is a page I hadn't been on before, which technically means I've gone round and round in circles getting further away from my actual goal of creating a mask…
Eventually it let me navigate back to the page once again, just for the mask creator to keep crashing while it tries to load, like before.
This entire procedure has only made me suffer.
Once I finally got it working, painstakingly choosing a design to fit what I saw best as my mask and shoulder armour it expected me to pay. It didn't tell me how much, nor did it load up a proper page for me to do so with.
Quite frankly, I gave up on that.
This experience teaches us that they should have just made the mask designer an in game function instead, for many reasons.
It's quite terrible when up 'til now I've spent over 600 words just explaining why the mask creator is messed up. What I really wanted to be doing was telling you about the game itself, but I am thorough – I want you armed with everything I feel you should know.
Let's actually look at the gameplay then shall we? The masks have taken up so much of my personally allotted review space already.
I enjoyed some of the sound aspects in the game. The weapons are well presented indeed, but gun SFX is two a penny these days. We take that old chestnut for granted. So how does the game 's audio department wow old timers? Well, it needs a good soundtrack. AOTTFD has what I would call a functional one. Not amazing, but it kicks up when combat scenarios begin, stopping when you're out of combat. The fun was to be had though, in hearing the enemies communicating with each other. When you hear them trying to work out how to kill you, it's rather immersing.
Graphically, the idea and overall result is impressive, because of the vast amount of destruction and chaos happening through the city. All of this has been represented. Buildings coming down, on fire - things blowing up all around you – and while it is all represented rather well overall, the actual graphics of the game, especially in its special effects seem to be lacking, somehow. The graphics engine isn't quite up to par with the technology of some other new shooters coming out. There's quite simply something lacking, something to be desired. That said, the overall feel of the game is consistent with the AOT world, after all. Having played the original I can say that the game looks more impressive than that.
But after all of that, how does it play? Okay, this is a third person shooter, so it's going to be bogged down with a lot of the usual third person shooter woes. Because the aim is not a "true aim" down the barrel by eye, sometimes your crosshair will be on a foe while you fire, but the scenery will deny it, taking the hits instead. Sometimes you'll try to target foes at awkward angles, such as below you and your own arm will obstruct the view, where the camera will have moved in closer. You're shooting blind. Sometimes, in a back to back your own partner's arm will get in your way if he turns around enough.
The back to backs are actually an element of AOT that I've never been a fan of. Why stand out in the open and shoot it out? Luckily there's only a couple of them to be found in the game. One of them however (the second one) has a punishing save checkpoint nowhere near the start of the back to back, so if you do fail it you'll probably groan when you see where it loaded you.
Back to back is an indicator of the game's less realistic and more movie-like stance. It's a lot dumber in its combat, than many other shooters. You simply have to do a lot of killing, like Rambo or some such. Big explosions and long shoot out showdowns. This is not a tactical shooter. The most tactical element is capturing enemies. You can grab them and choose to either tie them down or choke them out. Capturing the highest ranking of them (determined via GPS in-game vision mode) means the others will surrender.
There are some fun little touches in the game, such as you yourself being able to surrender, or co op surrender, then pull pistols and shoot them quickly. To do so, it even gives you a handy couple of seconds of slowed down game time.
You can flank the enemy, so that's a tactical way around, but it's nothing terribly clever. The game is quite good fun for it all though, if a little strange in its targeting system.
I'm quite experienced with shooters on the Xbox 360 but the targeting in AOTTFD always felt like an ongoing challenge somehow. I felt like I couldn't quite get the aim on the enemy as fast as I'd like to. I adapted my technique though, to compensate. I would get the aim onto a larger part of their lower body and let the recoil let me ride bullets up to their heads.
The oddness in targeting for me personally was probably due to the control sensitivity being bizarrely limited. When you go to the sensitivity adjustment screen, you'll see a long slider, but usage of it makes it move large incremental steps rather than along the bar for specific tweaking. I probably just didn't get it quite the way I like it.
There are still sections where you're forced to split up from your pal and are completely cut off from him. If this happens, you're both alone and unable to revive one another if you go down. A lot of critical attack has come upon games for this aspect. I think overall though that co-op games splitting up the players is a nice change of element for them both, especially when they end up in positions to still be able to support one another with their targeting zones crossing over each other.
This time round, the game has a strange morality system. You can make good or evil choices as it were. Some sections of the game will specifically call for you to make those decisions. One early example that comes to mind is a fellow who helps you through an opening section. You get the call privately with an offer of extra money if you take him down as well.
It's all up to you.
I wouldn't say that any of this system plays out in a satisfying way however. When you make a choice, you get a short comic book style sequence play out, showing the fate of your actions. They never feel connected or logically suited to your choices, so don't worry too much about what you choose.
At least you'll like the two characters you play. Salem and Rios are two distinct personalities and they really do play off of each other, sometimes like a comedy routine. The deeper characterization between them is one of the accomplished things in the game.
The game is on the short side, unfortunately, weighing in at seven levels, which are being completed in about six hours by most players. However, XBL DLC is now available with two extra levels. I can highly recommend them, although I'll warn you, the kill counts in them become ridiculous. My trigger finger ended up hurting (because I fight with short squeezes for controlled bursts instead of keeping it held down – this is for recoil (aim) efficiency and ammo management). Also, this new content costs 800 Microsoft points. Not good, when you've paid out for a game that is already so short.
Perhaps this is an indicator that yet more games will be released unfinished so that developers can release more DLC updates over time. I do hope gaming doesn't go too far in this direction in the future though, because the savings made from waiting a while and purchasing a game second hand would become nullified. In fact, I believe it could kill off the second hand games market altogether!
AOTTFD is a stout meaty, action demanding shooter. You can pretty much leave your brain at the door when you come in – it won't be needed here. But that too is its strength. It's like a rollercoaster ride. It gets pretty crazy but doesn't last long. It's worth it though, if you liked the first one or if you like Gears of War, which is very similar in gameplay to this.
[b]Pros: Some good old fashioned therapeutic shooting to stop you going postal in real life, big explosions everywhere – then when you're done with that – more things explode, did I mention that there's a lot blowing up? Just incase, lots of things blow up, boom! Salem and Rios are entertaining to listen to and "be" as usual.
Cons: Lacks depth, graphics could be better, controls and aiming aren't perfect.
Total Score: 7.9[/b]
Review originally posted on my gaming blog here - [URL=http://honestgamingprose.blogspot.com/2010/04/army-of-two-40th-day-review.html]http://honestgamingprose.blogspot.com/2010...day-review.html[/URL]