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Click Here For More Game ReviewsWith the ever expanding popularity of online gaming for consoles, game developers have been able to take virtual team based gaming to a new level beyond the once PC deathmatch FPS dominated online scene. FPS death matches and team death matches of course remains a very popular online choice for console gamers, but the trend to which I'm referring that's starting to really take shape is online co-op play. The actual concept of playing through campaigns and missions insidea storyline against CPU AI with another human gamer isn't exactly new in the gaming world (Still love those old TMNT co-op arcade games), but its mainstream adoption to the online world is only relatively fresh. I guess you could say co-op gaming is starting to make a bit of a come back.
However, while there has been a focus on online co-op in many action titles of late, few game developers have been as bold as to design an entire game around the concept. There has been a recent exception to this though from the folks at EA Montreal, with their title Army of Two. The name pretty much says it all, doesn't it? This third person action game is all about warfare and combat in some of today's real world hot spots, but it's played entirely in a co-op fashion with two main characters- 'Salem' and 'Rios'. The end result is an interesting combination of traditional action gaming fun with some unique team work dynamics, but this mixture isn't without its side effects.
As the story goes, Salem and Rios break off into the world of private security after a tenure in the US military, attracted by the higher pay and lowered restrictions, but stumble upon a disturbing plot that goes much higher in the chain of command than themselves. Treason, set ups, assassinations and the likes follow, and before you know it, you're deep into the plot of a cliche B grade action movie. This storyline is featured in the game's campaign mode, which can either be offline or online -EA know how to market games and they know that, despite the popularity of services like Xbox Live, making a game online only isn't a smart business move, so Army of Two still features a fully functional single player offline element, which is welcome.
This does mean one thing though - when you are playing offline, your partner in crime is obviously going to be driven by the game's AI, and if the single player mode is your first impression of the game like it was for me, unfortunately this isn't a very attractive prospect. The game revolves around the use of three major commands - 'stop', 'follow', and 'move forward' - and for each of these commands you can set a defensive or offensive mind set for your partner which dictates how he fulfillsthe command (i.e. aggressively or defensively). A lot of the time this system works fine, but your CPU AI partner will regularly botch commands, run around in circles, and basically prove to be a bit of a nitwit. This is unfortunate, but I can't say it's a huge surprise - AI always seems to be a concern in this type of game.
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