Army of Two

A year and a half ago, while EA was busy promoting Army of Two, Alain Tascan, General Manager for EA Montreal, had said that he wasn’t too impressed with Gears of War since it wasn’t innovative enough, nor did it bring anything new to the table. Now when you make such a powerful statement you better make sure your game delivers or you’re going to end up looking extremely foolish.

Looking back at that news article I can’t help but feel bad in a way for Alain (who I’m sure is hiding under a rock right now) since Army of Two is nowhere as awesome as Gears of War; in fact it’s as generic as it gets. To make matters worse, it’s shipped with virtually half the features that were announced during earlier previews. Enter one mediocre shooter.

Besides the whole co-op element, the only other "trick" this game has going for itself is the concept of AGGRO. For the uninitiated, AGGRO basically boils down to either you or your teammate firing at the enemy to draw their attention so that the other person can flank them and kill them. Now this works well while playing with a human partner but things can get pretty disastrous in the single player campaign. It’s not that controlling your partner is an elaborate process or anything; in fact, guiding him around the place is a very simple process; you can order him to follow you (passively or aggressively) or stay put to cover you (once again passively or aggressively) while you flank the enemy.

The reason this simple process becomes such a chore is because the game’s PAI (Partner Artificial Intelligence) suffers from extreme mental retardation. As and when you do require him to draw AGGRO, he finds it funny to just sit there and stare at the wall while mocking you with dialogues like "I got your back soldier"… when he clearly doesn’t. As expected you end up drawing all the AGGRO and he just sits put not even bothering to flank them. And then there are times when your partner will actually expose himself and attract thousands of bullets… even after you’ve ordered him to stay put. Hurray for stupidity!