Great co-op strategies make this third person shooter stand out amongst the crowd.
"The story begins in 1993 in Somalia when Salem and Rios are still in the U.S. 75th Ranger Regiment. They are tasked to work with Philip Clyde, a private military contractor with the Security and Strategy Corporation (SSC), to carry out an assassination. After this mission, Philip Clyde, on behalf of SSC CEO Ernest Stockwell, invites Lieutenant Colonel Richard Dalton (commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment) to join the company for a desk job. He agrees, asking to bring Salem and Rios with him as contractors, and in the following year, the three enter the private sector. Salem and Rios begin work as mercenaries. Over the course of a decade and a half, they are caught up in a complex scheme to privatize the military, and see to the plot's downfall." - Wiki. The plot is certainly not the reason you'll want to play this game, but it does spark enough interest to keep you playing once you've started.
The core of this game is the fantastic Co-Op style game play. You have control over the basic actions of your partner, (Advance, Regroup, Hold Position) and whether or not they are performing said action aggressively or defensively. When one of you is doing all of the shooting, that player accumulates "aggro". The more aggro the character has, the more fire they are going to draw. If the aggro-meter of one character is full, the other is basically invisible to the enemies, allowing him to do nearly anything on the battlefield that's needed.
Many situations require you to utilize this Aggro to survive, such as setting your partner to hold postion, aggressive, he draws all the fire, and you sneak around and eliminate the enemies behind cover. Without your partner you are nothing. With him, you can perform actions such as the step jump, to reach higher places, the back to back, in which you go back to back with your partner and eliminate enemies while being nearly invincible, Co-op snipe, eliminating two key targets at once so they cannot raise alarm, etc. Your partner also has the ability to heal you during battle if you fall, and vice versa.
The weapons of the game provide a fair amount of variety. There's a number of assault rifles, sniper rifles, handguns, machine guns, shotguns, and grenade/rocket launchers. Not to mention each of them has a fairly good assortment of stat improving upgrades. None of them feel particularly great to fire, but that's always been a problem for me and 3rd person shooters.
The graphics of the game are pretty good, but certain aspects of the environment are much more highly detailed than others, as are the characters. But I really have no complaints in this department. Over all its good. Sounds is the same. Very adequate, and the little remarks characters have to make can become a little cheesy, but overall help with a little comic relief. AI of your team-mate is generally good, but can definately hit some snags, and if your not playing on the unlock-able professional difficulty, the enemies AI is about as intelligent as a rock.
Overall, I found this game to be thoroughly enjoyable, and have played through it twice now just trying to upgrade all of the weapons and purchase all of the masks each character has available. Problem is, thats the only way you'll get any replay value out of this game. I say rent it unless your a hardcore shooter fan, in which case this really is a must own.