In Which I Give My Thoughts on Army of 2: The 40th Day

The plan for the end of the week and weekend was to try to push through Darksiders. However, the purchase of Army of 2: The 40th Day sidelined that plan for at least a little while. There's typically a small window of opportunity in our group to partake in co-op activities. We play a lot of games, and it's been a long while since we devoted more than a week or two to any one. So, with Barry screaming through multiple play throughs of Ao2: TFD I had to make the executive decision to join him, lest I be stuck running solo in a game that thrives on co-op play between two actual humans.

This time our ambiguous mercenaries, Salem and Rios, are out in Shanghai, and as in any situation, be it video game or movie, things don't go as planned. What looked like easy money quickly turns into a fight for their lives full of moral choices as they try to escape Shanghai and finally have that beer they keep talking about (and likely a few tender moments).

I didn't play all the way through the original Army of 2, but I did play enough to notice some of the improvements. For starters the shooting, though still not perfect, is improved. I felt like things reacted slightly faster and more accurately than in the first iteration. There was also a noticeable improvement in the way the cover system behaved. In the first Ao2, there was a slight delay between pulling the LT and your character peeking out of cover to aim down their sights. I remember this driving me crazy, and I'm glad to see it's been fixed for The 40th Day.

Army of 2: The 40th Day also boasts a heavy amount of weapon customization. You have the choice between several different stocks, barrels, cartridges, scopes, suppressors, and front mounts. Suppressors include bayonets... and those include a screw driver. Fuck. Yes. Front mounts are items like hand grips, shields, a grenade launcher... and that awesome shotgun add-on called the Master Key. Once again: Fuck. Yes. The whole idea of mounting a gun to a gun still kicks a lot of ass. You could easily spend an hour or 2 customizing all of your guns. Plus, it adds a little replay value since you can't easily grab all of the parts on your first run through without knowing exactly what choices to make. It's also unlikely that you'll earn enough money in one play through to buy all add-ons and guns.

As for the overall gameplay, everything works very well. The story is, as usual in games like this, a little lacking and somewhat full of holes. But, you likely won't care much once you get into the action. The gun play is solid. Salem and Rios move around a little slowly, but it fits in with the pacing of the combat very well. This isn't a game where you're often running and gunning. Cover is key and you'll spend most of your time sprinting from one location to the next, ducking into cover, and picking off enemies from there.

Just to point this out, headshots from a sniper rifle or Desert Eagle cause a very satisfying pop.

Visually the game looks very good. The environments are well built and you won't run into any of those frustrating hit detection problems that so often appear when trying to shoot between balcony railings and the like. Many of the cut scenes go into a very Borderlands-esque art style as you watch Shanghai be utterly destroyed. It's all executed very well.

The game has also added in a gauge of how moral you decide to be through out the game. Doing things like tying up guards and rescuing prisoners will give you a big plus sign on the morality scale. As far as I could tell, your level of morality in these situations rarely had an effect on the game. However, rescuing certain sets of hostages often rewards you with weapon parts, or in one case, that head-asploding Desert Eagle I mentioned. There are larger moral choices throughout the game which can also reward you with money or weapon parts. These larger choices require you to press "A" or "B" (I played on the Xbox 360) and are followed by a cutscene that shows you the immediate and long term consequences of your choice. You may consider this a "spoiler" but I'll let you know right now: You will not feel all that good regardless of the choice you make. EA was a real dick on this point.

The aggro system is back and you can work out simple, but fun strategies if you're playing with another person. There are a few larger enemies that require you to flank them or work yourself behind them. One player can usually stay behind cover and draw all the aggro while your partner sneaks around. You also have the option to remove silencers and scopes on the fly. Removing your silencer can help increase your aggro for those situations when you get the honor of playing decoy. To further help out your aggro strategies, there are often 2 paths for Salem and Rios to take. We found it beneficial to split up and take turns drawing aggro while the other person picked off unsuspecting enemies.

Still, as much awesomeness as they pack in, the game isn't perfect. There were times that I felt almost as if the guns had preset notches of movement. A slight tap left would, at times, cause a sort of "jump" in the reticule rather than a steady controlled shift. I don't mean it moved too quickly. I mean it seemed to only be able to look in one spot or the other. This would result in over-shooting what I was trying to aim for, and would start a sort of back and forth reticule dance across my target. I didn't notice this as much with the sniper rifles which I assume were slightly more fine tuned to serve their intended purpose. "Gun Sway" is still present, and it's reasonable. I actually like the addition of this in games. It adds a little more true skill to the art of sniping.

It also would have been nice to see the moral choices have more effect on the game itself. Sure, you can get some nice loot, but if you're going to include this stuff, then maybe make it more consequential. Then again, maybe that's not what this game was trying to be... perhaps the whole POINT of the morality system was just a means for collecting items. I'm just not sure I see the real point of it in the way it was executed. Plus, like I said, there's not really a "right" choice... the cut scene ends up making you feel like an asshole anyway.

Overall I found the game to be incredibly entertaining. It's definitely more enjoyable if you can recruit a buddy to play with you. EA has made the right improvements and brought a better product to the table this time around. They even cut down a lot on the bro-love... though you can still voluntarily give bro hugs. I don't know that I'd put it down as a definite "buy" but it's one you should give a shot at some point.

Mass Effect 2 Gets Even Closer

I've been working on a review of Army of 2: The 40th Day. My hope it to have it posted by tomorrow. With that, I guess you can assume that I have, in fact, played through the game. I'm actually on my second playthrough right now as I do some achievement hunting. Barry and I conquered that beast. I also noticed that Josh picked it up and was playing it with his roommate. Not to give away too much, but everybody enjoyed it.

So, Mass Effect 2 continues to be what is on everybody's mind. The first one was a game that locked all of us down for a while. The story gripped me hard and I came home every night ready to see what happened next. I think the last mission of the game might have been one of the most satisfying and exciting gaming experiences I've ever had.

There is a disturbance in the force. Barry's console has finally given up on him. It will be on it's way to Microsoft in the next day or so. It's highly unlikely that it will be back in time for the release. I can imagine it's causing some honest-to-God distress for the poor guy. If anybody has a 360 to lend, I'm sure he'd pay in "favors". That's as specific as I care to get.

So, I've been gone from this space since Thursday and most of my time since then was wrapped up in Ao2: TFD. However, I did take a little time to download and try out 'Splosion Man. I was very impressed. I found myself laughing a lot at the goofy sound effects and ridiculous animations. You're a man who explodes... and when you kill an enemy they turn into all your standard "grilling-on-the-weekend" fair. It's a clever, fun, hilarious game that is AT LEAST worth a run through the demo. The control scheme is incredibly simple too... pretty much every button makes you explode. It's awesome.

Well, that's about all I've got. Keep an eye out for my full thoughts on Army of 2: The 40th Day very soon. Sorry for the short, and somewhat un-entertaining post. It's late, and it's been quiet around the Axis. Expect better soon.

We Suck At L4D2, EA Hates Barry, and RRODs

The Axis played a little four player Left 4 Dead 2 last night, and about all I have to say is that we really are not good at that game... yet. We tried the Dark Carnival campaign and things were going swimmingly until the last stand on the Midnight Riders' stage. And, even then, things went pretty well until the chopper arrived. This is when we put our "suck" on full display for all the undead to see... and that Tank... and that Jockey... I think the Spitter was there... maybe a Hunter in the mix too. That is to say, there were a lot of special infected in the area when the chopper arrived. On our first attempt at the finale we were learning the lay of the land. We found the health packs, ammo, pipe bombs, etc. Our concern was not knowing where rescue would come from or where it would finally settle to wait for us. To complicate things we had a fucking gnome in tow the entire time. There's a carnival game you can play early on, and scoring 750 points or more drops ol' Gnome Chompski. There's an achievement for rescuing him, and dammit, we were going to get it.

That first attempt ended when the chopper arrived while were were all out of position. I had to run back for the gnome, A tank showed up, there was a jockey out there, plus a horde wave. We got spread out between the stage and the chopper and everybody went down.

On attempt number two, we had a little more success. We placed the gnome by the final resting spot of the chopper, then took our spot on the stage. Everything was pretty uneventful until, once again, the chopper showed up. We all kind of got over NEAR the chopper, but then a seemingly invincible Jockey got a hold of Barry and rode him off into the sunset. Rescue attempts were useless and ultimately stupid... but we fucking mastered in Stupid in college (I know right, "you went to college?"). Fast forward a solid 10 seconds: that limey Ben is sitting on the chopper (with the gnome), Chuck is out, Barry is out, and I'm hobbling back at 1% health. Enter the giant piece of concrete the Tank likes to magically pull from his pocket. They try to make it look like he pulls a chunk off of whatever he's standing on... but he was on some wooden bleachers (aluminum at best)... anyway, I died. Ben took off with the chopper. Nobody made it start to finish (Ben entered the game after the first safe house); therefore nobody got any achievements. We might take another stab at this tonight.

After we completed our lecture on fail, I took to watching some TV and chatting with Ben and Barry while they tried to set up a game of Army of 2: 40 Bro-hugs a Day (I mock it... but I still bought it). EA decides that Barry is not in their target demographic (Do Chinese people want to play games that take place in China?) and won't let him into their servers. So Ben and I went through about the first 30 minutes of the game. I enjoyed it. The controls are a little sluggish and take some getting used to, but it was fun to be sure.

Let me revisit Barry's problems for a bit. His 360 is bordering on busted right now. He was going all old school NES on it to try and make it work... right down to blowing into the disk drive. He smacked it around a bit and it finally started reading disks. I could just see him pressing the power button and getting that fucking screen that flashed between blue and static. That was always awesome. It didn't help that the first Nintendo I ever owned spent a couple of years hooked up to a TV that had to "warm up" before anything could be watched on it. So that made the "work dammit!" song and dance all the more fun. Anyway, to summarize, Barry will be getting a visit from the RROD fairy soon.

Which brings me to this morning. EA finished their background check on Barry and let him into their precious game. He contacted Ben and they agreed to meet in the virtual space for some Ao2. This is where Ben's 360 promptly red ringed. It's a real shit storm out there kids.