EightBitWarrior

In Army of Two, you and a friend (or an AI buddy) take on the role of high risk, high reward soldiers Elliot Salem and Tyson Rios. You start out in the game as enlisted men, but quickly jettison your positions in favor of joining the SSC private military corporation. Going from two ordinary soldiers to two money hungry die-hards in nothing flat, Salem and Rios are assigned reconnaissance and assassination missions in response to the 9/11 terror attacks. There are a few twists and turns along the way, but this isn't a storyline you'll be talking about for long. In fact, it's doubtful you'll really care at all.

The main gameplay in the game is focused from the ground up on the idea that you're a team, and you must act accordingly. Running out guns a-blazing in nearly any situation will have you taking a dirtnap, even on the games lowest difficulty setting, Recruit. Instead, the game provides a shared meter that both players must utilize called the Aggro Meter. Derived from massively multiplayer online game monster patterns, this bar will show which player the enemies are actively pursuing, and which the enemies are ignoring. When you are being focused on, your character will be glowing bright red, as to take the attention off your teammate. Meanwhile, your buddy will become invisible to the enemy and will be able to sneak up and wreak havoc on any unsuspecting foes.

Things aren't all cherries and gumdrops with this system, however, and that's partially due to the games button layout. Often times as the stealth character, you'll find yourself shooting the enemy rather than meleeing, because both actions share the same button. This is a design choice I just can't understand. There are plenty of buttons on the controller, so there's no excuse. In the event that you find yourself victim of this issue, you'll discover that the games shooting and aiming system is not at all meant for close quarters combat.

So as you find you and your partner frequently raising the bar left and right in turn, you'll be prompted to activate the games Overkill mode. This mode grants you unlimited ammo and removes the need to reload your weapon. This can be pretty cool if you're the stealth guy, but the targeted one will sometimes find this harming them more than it helps, because it disables crouching behind cover. You really need to coordinate to use this well, or you'll find yourself dying a bit like myself.

Scattered throughout the game are these cooperative progression moments that are at first pretty cool, but soon feel tacked on and irritating. These actions include kicking a door open together, helping your teammate up a high ledge, pulling a lever, and just about anything short of holding your buddy's hand while he walks. These segments add to the charm at some points, but at other times it's way too overused, and will have you sighing at each instance they show up. There's a section in the game where you have to watch Salem and Rios open up a busted garage door about 6 times in a row within a few minutes. Please go easy on these types of things if you make a sequel, EA. This reminds me of developers of early Wii and DS games that tacked on motion or touch controls for no good reason, and basically ruined their games.

During missions, you'll be prompted if you wish to enter mid-mission shopping or not, and you'll find yourself selecting yes for the majority of the game. There are tons of weapons to choose from, including the AK47, the AUG, and other renamed versions of popular weapons like the M4 or the G36C. There are plenty of pistols and sub-machine guns at your disposal that you can equip as a secondary weapon for your character, but I found that most of these are pretty useless. Pistols can take out some dudes fairly quickly, but you'll have to put forth twice the effort to get them to work effectively. Oddly enough though, despite the plethora of weapons at your disposal, I found myself using the same weapon I started the game with, the AK47, through 90% of entire game, because it felt the most competent.

Within the shop, there are plenty of ways to customize your gear as well, but most of them are throw aways, serving no other purpose but a level 1, 2, or 3 upgrade. You can change the barrel, the silencer, the ammo container, and the stock on most weapons, and you can also "pimp" your gun. This basically blings out your weapon all crazy like, such as plating it with gold, or encrusting it with diamonds. There's no real purpose to this outside of drawing more aggro to your character. Apparently the terrorists get jealous at your success and want to shoot you more sincerely.

You'll find that the shooting in the game mostly feels pretty good, but there are a few gripes with it. The first and foremost being the fact that outside of the sniper rifles, there is no way too zoom in with your gun. This can be a problem because the game likes to pit you a fair distance away from your targets, and it can feel like you're shooting dots on the screen that are constantly bobbing in and out of cover. The other problem being that it takes far too long to actually take an enemy down. Unless you're landing headshots, a lot of ammo is going to be wasted throughout the course of the game.

Breaking up the standard action in the game are a few special sections sprinkled throughout. There are times you'll be guiding a parachute while your teammate snipes, and also times where you'll have to "co-op snipe" a target. There are also these nifty segments where Rios and Salem go back to back. During these, the game goes into a slow, almost bullet time mode, where you unload on guys with an unlimited ammo clip.

There are a few "wow" moments within the game, mostly due to the games terrific graphics engine. Plenty of high dynamic range lighting, beautiful water, and a rock solid framerate to back it all up round out the games visuals. It's too bad that the graphics are about all that sticks out when thinking of memorable moments in the game though. The sound isn't much to squawk about either. From the cheesy dialog to the disappointing sounding weaponry, there's not a whole lot to love here.

So yeah, for the most part, you're hiding behind cover and shooting the same few enemies again and again. It's a shooter, yes, but perhaps if the game had a story you cared at all about, this would become less noticeable. The game actually started to feel a bit tedious 2/3 through the game, which is kind of sad considering the game lasts you only 6 hours before you see the credits roll. As for the multiplayer side of things to extend this, I was actually unable to get into a match that wasn't a total lag fest. I'm not quite sure if the servers were having problems, or if it was the game's fault, but it wasn't running at a playable rate at the time.

Overall, Army of Two is a decent game, but I definitely cannot approve of a full price purchase. It might be an amusing title to play through in a weekend with one of your buddies, but there simply is not enough content to dive into. Not only is the campaign short, but there are only 4 competitive multiplayer maps, and a complete lack of any deathmatch mode. Also, if you don't plan on playing with other actual human beings, I cannot recommend picking up the game at all, honestly. The AI simply isn't smart enough to be your trusted wingman, and you'll be missing out on the fun completely.

Capcom has finally dished out a helping of its smart-ass demon hunters to next generation platforms, this time following a fresh face with his own dark secrets. When you begin the game, you'll be treated to one of the most fantastically captivating cinematics you've ever seen, depicting Kyrie (new hero Nero's love interest in the game) singing a gripping ballad at the head of a church, while a tardy Nero races through an alleyway, slaying as many demons as possible on the way. The excellence on this front doesn't let up through-out the entire game, however, the same cannot be said of the gameplay itself.

During the opening scene of the game, you'll witness the leader of church give its members a speech about Sparda, the dark knight who they worship as their god and savior. No sooner than when he gets these words out, Dante crashes the party, killing the leader in the process. The game is quickly injected into a tale of revenge, and you are tasked with the duty of finding and killing Dante any way you can.

As you set off, long-time fans of the series will be pleased to know that practically nothing has changed, and you'll feel right at home. Herein lies the first problem though: it feels too much like home. You'll find that it can get a bit repetitive slashing the same few types of demons, especially after seeing the "area is being blocked by some red wall" cutscene for the 1000th time. That's not to say the combat is bad by any means, because it is still really solid, and is by most means better than other games in the genre.

Where the second most prominent issue lies is within the level design and game structure. Often times you'll be wandering around rather bland environments not quite sure what to do, or you'll find yourself backtracking far more than you'd ever want to. This becomes much more apparent as you are introduced to playing Dante at a point in the game, as you'll mostly only get to use him to backtrack through levels you've already completed with Nero. Were there some serious time constraints over at Capcom? Sometimes your destinations can be somewhat unclear as well, and you might find yourself wandering around for a good while before figuring out where you're supposed to go. I did, and trust me it's not very fun.

Speaking of Dante, he is far more fun and versatile to play than Nero. It makes you wonder why they didn't just create a story exclusively around him in the first place. Okay, to be fair, Dante is far too snarky to drive anything resembling a sensitive storyline, but that eludes the point. When playing Dante, you're treated to various different fighting styles and weapons selectable on the fly from both the d-pad and triggers respectively. When playing Nero, you're stuck with the one sword and one set of pistols, yet he has a few more tricks up his sleeve, including his Devil Bringer arm, which can grab enemies from afar and do all sorts of nasty melee moves to them. This can be very useful, but also feels a bit broken in some respects.

Probably the most fun to be had in the game, besides gawking at the incredibly choreographed cutscenes, is fighting bosses. It's a good thing too, because you'll be fighting the same ones over and over again. I did notice that the bosses were much easier with Dante however, because his arsenal of weapons and tricks far outweigh even the handy Devil Bringer that Nero packs. You'll fight various formidable foes (including the towering flame boss Berial as shown above), as well occasionally getting introduced to some humorous villains. It's worth noting that there are quite a few chuckles to be had during the pre-battle banters.

The visual presentation of the game is top notch as far as console action games go. You'll fight towering bosses and face dozens of enemies without seeing the game slow down from its solid 60 frames per second. It's all quite impressive to see pulled off, but you're not going to have an eye orgasm in result. As for the audio side of things, the voice actors do their job well to get you interested in matters at hand. I would like to point out though, that the way Kyrie is pronounced got on my nerves after a while (they pronounce it something like kitty-ay.)

Finishing the main storyline in the game will take you anywhere from around 8-10 hours to do, although it might feel longer due to the inhumane amount of backtracking and replaying you'll be forced into. There are some reasons to come back to the game, and again, fans of the series will know about what to expect here, being basically the same reasons as always. There are multiple unlockable difficulties including the infamous Heaven or Hell mode where all enemies and yourself die in one hit, there's the Bloody Palace, which basically acts as an extreme endurance test throwing waves of enemies at you, and of course there's the goal of raising your mission ranks and maxing out your characters weapons and abilities.

Speaking of which, I'd like to touch on the shop and upgrade system, because it pisses me off. After each mission, you may spend any red orbs you've earned within missions on items, and any proud souls you've recieved for completing missions on upgrades and abilities. The problem with all of this is attributed to the store's pricing model. You are shown supposedly the exact price for each item you can buy, but every time you buy something, the prices go up a seemingly random amount. This is incredibly annoying when it comes to getting abilities that have multiple stages, since when you buy one of them, the rest skyrocket in price, making you unable to purchase them. Why bother showing me how much they cost if I can't have them at that price. I know this is nothing new to the franchise, but why must this happen? The fact that this also applies to health and other recover items makes it even more sadistic. Obviously if the game is busting a person's balls, preventing them from recieving aid is not encouraging. To make matters worse, this price hike is irreversable.

I can't quite put my finger on what to think of this game. There were times that I seriously did not want to continue playing (due to the backtracking, level design and puzzles), and there were other times where I was having a blast (mostly when playing as Dante and executing "Smokin' Sick Style" combos). There are times when you don't quite understand what you're doing, and other times when you don't quite care because you're busting some skulls (and it feels so good). If you're a Devil May Cry fanatic, you should already own this game. For everyone else, give it a rent.