There's some good, there's some bad - my review covers both.
Some time after the events of Army of Two: The Fortieth Day, Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem (recovered from the shot in the back he takes in the 'good' ending of the previous game) are expanding their business, Tactical Worldwide Operations (TWO), and taking on new recruits. The players take on the roles of two of these fresh faces, designated Alpha and Bravo. Bravo, the videogame-playing former criminal with a penchant for base humour represents the 'id' half of the pair, while Alpha, the procedure-following former soldier who doesn't understand any of Bravo's jokes represents the super ego. This is more-or-less the same dynamic struck by Rios and Salem in the previous games, and together they make up the personality of one normal human being.
It's a shame that most people seem to be judging this game on its mechanics alone, because there's a lot of story going on here. The moral choices that players had to make in the previous game have driven a wedge between the original protagonists. In the first mission, Rios, Salem, Alpha and Bravo infiltrate a Mexican cartel compound. When they find a kidnapped girl, Rios makes the decision to stay and rescue her, putting everyone's lives at greater risk and straying from the mission parameters. Salem objects and splits off from the group, getting caught in an explosion as he tries to make a getaway. Five years later, it seems that Rios hasn't yet forgiven the La Guadana cartel for killing his partner as he pledges the support of his entire organization to a mayoral candidate who has promised to throw the cartel out of the town of La Puerta. Cue the full-blown war between the cartel and a coalition of Mexican police and American mercenaries.
I will get into the mechanics of this game - good and bad - but first I want to say how impressed I am with how EA Montreal has approached the setting. Do you remember the first Army of Two? The post-9/11 revenge/power fantasy that had you fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan? That was a bit embarrassing, mostly because it showed no respect for any of the people involved - not the victims and not the soldiers. And then you were fighting the Chinese for some reason....It was just a mess; a mash-up of mid-'00's American xenophobia. Then there was The Fortieth Day, which, first of all, depicted the Chinese army as being incapable of handling a minor insurrection, and second, had the leader of the insurrection be an American. What's the message here? Is it that a person can't be a serious threat unless they sh*t red, white and blue? That's crazy.
In The Devil's Cartel, on the other hand, the Mexican police are present in the proceedings, an effort is made to depict the real-world brutality of the cartels, and we aren't expected to believe that the fate of Mexico rests with us - just one little town. This feels like a much more mature game than the predecessors were. In fact, this game almost feels like a proposal on how to resolve the current cartel crisis in Mexico - international intervention. Unfortunately, the leader of the cartel turns out to be yet another American, but seeing as how he is a) a competently evil villain, and b) played by Joe Flanigan (Colonel Shepard of Stargate Atlantis), I don't mind so much.
Now we talk about the fun stuff. Guns. Glorious guns. The selection isn't as wide as that to be found in other popular shooters - only thirty-three guns in total - but the weapon customization system is one of the best I've ever seen, second only to Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Barrels, muzzles, magazines, stocks, scopes, side mounts, under-barrel mounts - all of these can be altered, and then jazzed up with a selection of weapon skins that puts Call of Duty to shame. Strangely though, armour-piercing rounds only increase stopping power. Bullet penetration, a feature present in The Fortieth Day, has been taken out in favour of more destructible environments (More Battlefield, less CoD). While it's fun for a while to blow enemies and their cover away in one stroke, it gets old once you realize that your success depends less on your ability to direct your bullets than it does on your ability to produce them.
A feature that I think has been a loooooong time in coming to shooters is the ability to carry two weapons AND a sidearm...you know...like actual soldiers do. That's a nice addition. But I have to say, The Devil's Cartel delivers the absolute worst close quarters combat that I have ever experienced in a game. I generally prefer automatic rifles to shotguns in games, but even by my standards the shotguns in this game are nearly unusable. At distances of less than ten metres you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, and at distances of greater than ten metres you may as well be spitting at the enemy for all the damage it does. Once, when I was five metres from an enemy, I put my targeting reticule right on his face and had to fire my shotgun four times before the shell connected.
I've heard many complaints about the absence of co-operative mechanics that were present in previous Army of Two games, such as the aggro-meter and synchronized sniping. I don't think it's fair to say that they're absent; I think the appropriate term would be 'streamlined'. Taking turns with your partner to pull the enemies' aggro and flank is still a huge part of the combat, it's just that there is no longer an intrusive meter on your HUD telling you how p*ssed off the enemies are. You can still mark enemies for your partner, it's just that there are no longer sections that require you to do so in order to proceed. Synchronized sniping may be gone, but your AI partner is so quick on the trigger that you won't even miss it.
Remember when Gears of War perfected cover-based, third person shooting, and then every game made for the next seven years tried to imitate it? Well, the cover system in The Devil's Cartel blew me away. It's smooth, precise, free-flowing - a solid contender for the crown of 'best cover mechanics'. The only thing that detracted from the experience was the fact that I frequently found myself playing a deadly game of musical chairs as my AI partner and I constantly went for the same pieces of cover.
So what's the bottom line? Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel is a very solid game. Two player co-op, deep weapon customization, easy-to-use cover mechanics, and a decent story to boot. I think that it's the best installment in the Army of Two franchise to date. But that's the problem: I'm just comparing it to the two previous games. The Devil's Cartel is cut from the same cloth as Army of Two 1 and Army of Two: The Fortieth Day, and that cloth is beginning to show its age. There's no escaping the fact that these games revolve around two player co-op - a gimmick that has been done to death and surpassed - and everything else that they do is essentially filler. I'm a long time fan of the franchise, so I enjoyed the Devil's Cartel, but even I'll admit that the more adaptable franchises out there are currently producing better games.
The bottom line is: If you like the previous games, you'll like this one; if you don't, you won't.