Army Of Two: The 40th Day Hands-On Preview
Army of Two: The 40th Day is a third person shooter being developed by EA Montreal. The original was perceived to be an interesting take on the genre, as it focused specifically on cooperative play, where by the player must take advantage of two characters in order to complete objectives.
Gaming Union was fortunate enough to get a chance to play the sequel which was played via system-link. It was clearly a work in progress, but the two of us were able to participate in a co-operative mission. The demo gave access to a fair few weapon types ranging from shotguns to sniper rifles, and just about every bad guy seemed to packing quite the muscle.
Gameplay was pretty decent. The controls felt fluid and targeting was pretty easy. One slightly odd thing though, was the lack of any kind of crosshair, so aiming literally had to be done by focusing the character. There were also some minor gripes regarding the cover system, as it wasn't very easy to latch onto objects. No button was assigned for this and it was specifically related to player movement which seemed a bit cumbersome.
Disappointingly the demo didn't really show off much of the two-man team gameplay mechanics. There was absolutely no requirement to use any of it to progress. The only time having a team member became interesting, was actually when one of the soldiers was downed. The remaining soldier then has the task of trying to pull him back from danger the reviving him. It did seem very dramatic and it's shame there weren't really any more forced events like this added to the demonstration.
The AI wasn't particularly impressive, as it mostly consisted of a confused attempt to just suppress the player continuously. The majority of progress was based on killing several dozen enemies before players could continue forward, something that sort of lacked an element of finesse. There was an interesting approach to the boss that was fought, although it was made very obvious how to defeat him via a cutscene.
Graphically, Army of Two: the 40th Day looks fairly promising. It wasn't spectacular, but it was fairly colourful and thats something that isn't often done nowadays. The sound quality was also pretty decent, and fire effects and explosions were quite engrossing.
For a game that's not too far off its release, it was disappointing that they didn't showcase more of the gameplay features based around the teamwork. It's one of the unique selling points, and it's what made the original stand out. The demo may have been quite old build, but it didn't really do much to help the game stand out from the crowd. Hopefully things are changed between now and the game's release, which is in January, 2010 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
