Army of One and Half.

Oh. Dear.

That is my responce to Army of Two.How can you screw up a game with such a simple concept, this bad?

A quick summary of the story:

Rios and Salem are two hired mercenaries who start to get a little suspicious about their boss and co-workers as they begin to spiral into more and more trouble. Or so

that is what I gathered from the rather pathetic story line. It had so much potential, and it is just gunned down. The wafer thin story line has so much back story that

isn't developed. Why can't we play through the years shown in a particular cutscene? Because the game is litterally too generic and repetive to do so.

The explosive montage cutscene towards the begining was the highlight of the game. The polish of the cutscenes in the game, with the rather cell shaded textures and

bold colours. So why does the game have such a bland and lackluster settings for it's missions? Why do the graphics look generic and flat? If you can work cutscenes

like that, I'm sure you can make a decent looking game.

The combat does a good job- if you have a secondary human controlling the other member of the group. The AI in this game is flabagasting. Never have I seen such poor AI

from a well funded game. Let me give you an example of what happened to make me hate it so much: I had gotten myself into a spot of bother with some terrorists, and

needed assistance from my good chap Salem. As he wandered over to me, walking right past the enemy troops and dragging me from decent cover I had, to the begining of

the checkpoint. From there he ran forward and took out most of the men shooting those darn bullets, and left me to die. When he had finished, he began to walk in

circles until I had perished. Another time, in a simple 'puzzle' the game had given us the task of, was to press a switch, so that I could open a door on the other

side. The AI walked past the switch and out the door. Leaving me stranded on the other side awaiting his return. The enemy AI has no problems, they take good cover, and

shoot you. So why can't my guy do the simple task of pressing a goddamned switch?!

The best is when you get knocked down. You sit like a primary school student, awaiting to be dragged around and healed. You can't move, but you can shoot. This is

painful to watch, as the enemy disappears behind the wall, and you can't crawl to do such things as, blast his face.

The cover mechanic in this game is confusing. It works, but has this odd feeling about it. It isn't Gears of War, where it is clear you are taking cover, but you crouch

and you'll nestle in nicely, or press why and you'll be flung from your spot to a near by wall. It works, but it seems a little light. No solid ground being taken. The

guns also don't feel solid when you shoot. There isn't any feedback from getting a satisfying headshot. Once you unlock a particular gun, it becomes more fun, but

that's not the point. Why should I wait to unlock fun? You have a whole range of guns to choose from, but you end up just sticking to one sort, and upgrading it.

Another mechaninc which was also a high point in the game, was the Aggro Meter. Now this, is how games should do it more often. What this does is, the more you shoot

and the type of gun it is, the more aggro you'll pull towards you, making the enemies focus on the Rambo of the team. This also means you can activate Overkill, a

mindless feature in which you get two times the damage on enemies. The one with the least aggro can then sneak up on enemies and take them out.

The back to back feature was poorly used. It was used at the wrong times and the wrong places. Why couldn't it be used in the boring final shoot out to make things a

little more exhilarating?

'Boss' fights were umongst the most useless things in the game. Along with the sniper rifle, Co-Op Snipe, (the AI partner kept declining, when it could've proved

useful). They are basically the more stronger enemies that you see scattering the stages. Shoot till one has more aggro, and run behind and shoot. Boring, tedious and

just downright dumb. To add to this, there is no actual character or build up to fighting them, it sort of just happens without you knowing. This doesn't help when the

boss tends to be half way down the map, and if you die, you have to rewatch the unimaginative cutscene all over again.

Army of Two. More like Army of One and a Half, if you play how I did. Dear lord, please don't. If you do have to play this game, please find someone willing to waste

their time. It is just so boring and unoriginal. The guns don't feel great, and the mechanics are wasted. The enemies are bland and the antagonists are goofy and daft.

I have little hopes for the sequel and this has put an impression on me, as to where the third person shooter genre is going. Boring, generic, cover based shooters. Oh dear.