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Like Gears Of War Without The Fun

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 27
Date: March 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The taste in my mouth: (before the actual review)

This game is bad. I mean, what marketing focus group decided the two main characters (white guys) would talk in surfer ebonics? Does that somehow increase the game's appeal to an inner-city 16-24 crowd? Don't even get me started on "pimping" your weapons with the money you earn. I'm not talking about customizing appearance or effectiveness (one of the things that earned this game two stars of fun), but simply changing the weapon's appearance like a cheesy late-90s hip hop video would.

If it sounds like I'm ragging on hip hop culture, ebonics, or anything like that, forget it...it's just that I'm mystified as to why this game would include such over-the-top, cheesy content at EVERY TURN. On to the review:

A rundown:

Plot/Dialogue: SO...CHEESY. After the first 20 minutes, you're dreading the cutscenes (they look pretty, though). What predictable plot twist will come next? What cool-guy quip will the dorky characters blurt out? Pathetic. I'll bet you can guess the first plot twist before it's even introduced. Just come up with the most clichee, overused device you can imagine.

Controls/Feel: Playable. Smooth, but player movement and animation feels clunky. Like Gears of War without the realism or fun. Aiming while running or maneuvering around obstacles is tough (not in a realistic way; in an annoying way). The one thing that really gets to you after an hour or so is the player death/healing animations and the hand-to-hand animations. Often you'll find yourself involuntarily going into one of these slow, unstoppable animations in the middle of combat when you'd rather get behind some cover. You will die because of this. Often, if you're playing on the harder difficulties. Also, when playing in co-op, joystick sensitivity can't be individually adjusted (and there's only 3 settings, none of which seem quite right after Halo, Gears, etc).

AI: Crappy. Everything even mildly cool that enemies do in the game is scripted. The AI itself is extremely basic. It feels like you're fighting the same two types of enemies for the entire game, they just keep getting progressively harder to kill. No personality, no backstory to the enemy types...they're just mindless drones that you kill in hordes. Fun for an hour or two. Boring for the rest of the game.

Level Design: Boring. Cosmetically, the levels all look good after you get past Afghanistan and Iraq...even reasonably different from each other. It's always the same cover placement, though, and the levels always work the same way. It gets really repetitive after a while. By the end, the co-op partner I had started with had abandoned me, and I was figuring out where the ambushes would come from just by seeing where the cover was placed. Sound crazy? That's the kind of mental acrobatics you'll be playing with yourself if you try to push through the entire game...just to keep it SOMEHOW entertaining.

Co-Op: A friend of mine shelled out the better part of $60 for this game. We played for half an hour on the normal difficulty and turned off the console. He was so disappointed that he gave the game to me to finish (so I could write this review). This is a guy who LOVES shooters, who LOVES co-op. Sadly, the co-op actions in this game (co-op snipe, jump steps, etc) are SO contrived and useless, it feels like they were just added on at the end of the game design. You will run into bridges that have little holes JUST so you can jump-step up on the other side, so you feel like there's still some "co-op action" going on. Two words: BS.

Graphics/Hud: The HUD sucks. It's hard to see your crosshairs for the first 20 minutes of the game (until you stop looking for them). Graphics aren't nearly as good as Gears of War, which came out a looong time ago.

PROS: The game sucks, but there ARE a few small things that don't. To be fair, I'm including them...although nothing can stop this game from trainwrecking in the first 25 minutes.

Autosaving is GREAT. I feel like I would have chucked this game across the living room if I'd had to replay large sections of it. The game's autosaving is as seamless and helpful as I've ever seen in a game (if only Splinter Cell: Double Agent had implemented something like this!). It really saved me a ton of time and frustration.

Customizing your weapons is fun, too. Too bad there's no way to sell off weapons you've been using to invest in the bigger, better ones by the end of the game. Oh well.

OVERALL:

Props to the programmers, animators, art guys, etc....all the "grunts" who worked on this game. It runs smooth, looks pretty, and all the technical stuff seems to work just fine. You guys did a great job. Where this game utterly fails is the concept/design itself. What happened?

Seriously, what went wrong? Too many focus groups diluting the core ideas that could have made this game cool? Too much marketing BS about making the game more attractive to a wider audience? The idea could have been cool, if the concept had just been left alone. As it is, though, everything about Army of Two feels totally overproduced. It's like a bunch of 50-year old white guys were trying too hard to make it "cool"...which resulted in laughably bad dialogue/characters, an "I've-seen-it-a-million-times" plot, and BORING gameplay. No amount of pimping my AK-47 can fix that.

If any part of you still thinks this game could be cool, RENT IT FIRST. You'll see what I'm talking about. If you still love it, then buy it, but I think that advice will save a ton of people $55 that they could invest in something else.

Good luck to those who've already sunk cash into this game. Try to get rid of it while the marketing hype is still going, because after that no one will want it. A total loss.

0.5/5

WOW

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: March 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I thought this would be so much better. Don't watch the ads because that is not what the game is like. There are far to many load screens that take an eternity. People have said this is like gears of war. It is not even close!!!!!!! It steals ideas from there and them makes them bad. Terrible interface and many glitches!! What is the deal with the melee attacks. It is the same button as shoot so you never know what it is going to do.

This is fun if you have someone to play with. Other wise forget it, this is a waste of money and an insult to the name Gears of War. They tried far to hard to add cool little things like congratulating your partner, and videos with awesome graphics.

Story is very bad does not flow at all and very abrupt ending. You can hardly even tell that you are fighting the last guy until he is dead.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One word.... terrible

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: May 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game is just terrible... truly terrible. I was able to finish it in under a day and must agree with the review above. The game does look nice but the story is so contrived and sounds as though it were written as part of a John MCcain election speech. We must stop the terrorists... blah blah blah more terrorists and suicide bombers :America is the best. I think the worst part of this game though is the aiming system. It would be fun to play online if the aiming was not so difficult up close. You can easily shoot someone down but then you have to back up to kill them again before they get up and kill you. Also if someone leaves when you are playing online the game ends.... it really sucks when you're in the middle of a 30 minute battle and someone decides they dont want to play anymore.

Overall I would say rent this game or avoid it altogether.
I should have known from the cheesy music during the commercial that it would be like this.

Pretty graphics, engaging co-op, a ton of guns and not much else.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: March 08, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I, like a lot of people was very excited to play this game. I will admit however that when it was initially supposed to be released last year I definitely had absolutely no intentions of purchasing. But after the extra hype and the hopefully polishing that went on for those extra several months, I was on board.

To sum it up, the game has a co-op experience like no other, very pretty graphics but not much else. I'm just going to cut to the chase and spare you my wonderful writing skills: Shooting in this game is extremely frustrating. Not to mention the behavior of the AI is annoying. That = hard to kill. You will take a ton of hits and go down for the count when you don't really expect to. The melee-ing is terrible. You need to be face to face with the enemy and if you CAN manage to get into that position, you still have a 50/50 chance that his magical computer powered skills won't melee you first.

I've read other reviews that this game contains great production values. I heard all about the battleship sinking while you are on it, and though I am no Call of Duty Fan Boy (by the way, I have disowned the game as of last week in support of R6V2) the first mission of COD4's ship sinking blows Army of Two's ship sinking out of the water (figuratively and literally). Sure it's awesome to see some fighter jets falling past you but it's short and honestly appears to be half done. A TOTAL dissappointment. Other than that there really is no huge action sequence to write home about.

A stiff breeze could knock the bosses down. Yes the "Aggro" system is novel and unique, but you don't really need to use it, and even when my human partner and I tried to utilize it, we were basically punished because it did not work. Also if you WANT to use Aggro you are required to unload all of your ammunition which is not extremely plentiful. Every single boss in the game can only be killed one way: from the back. The boss in the first mission is just as hard as the boss you fight in the 5th mission. There is no curve of difficulty. The same goes for the other enemies in the game.

A lot of the Co-op functions in the game are pretty useless. Co-op snipe is a cool concept but you utilize it 2, maybe 3 times. The back to back feature which sounds awesome cannot even be initiated by the player, the game itself automatically puts you into it, USUALLY at the very beginning of the stage. I will give credit where credit is due, the co-op parachuting is awesome. It is a challenge to snipe while in motion but still awesome. The hovercraft contains the most ridiculous controls I've ever encountered in a game. I highly doubt it is that complicated to operate an actual one.

The game can be blown through in 6 hours on the initially given hardest difficulty. Once beaten you have the option to complete on a harder difficulty, but why you'd want to put yourself through that mindless drivel a second time given the fact that you know exactly what to expect is beyond me.

I myself LOVE LOVE LOVE multiplayer aspects of games. I hold it in higher regards than nthe single player. I hoestly wish I could give you a full review of the multiplayer, but unfortunately after waiting 15 minutes in a room witih my friend we could not get 2 more people to join our match. However we did successfully enter one match and to say it wasn't fun would be an understatement. I enjoyed it yet it was a little ridiculous because along with with the human opponents the map was fully of AI opponents which always happen to come out once I engaged the human opponent. This really leaves the multiplayer match winners to be determined by luck. That does not equal a strong multiplayer component in my eyes.

One strong suit of this game is the selection of guns and the amount you can customize them. This section is awesome. It almost looks as though they spent more time fine tuning this aspect than the actual gameplay and AI choices made while creating. Although it would be fun to unlock all weapons and masks, I don't think I could play the amount required in order to accumulate enough money to purchase them all. But I admit that the weapon selection and customization is the strongest part of the game.

In closing, yes it was a diversion of 6 or so hours from my normal life. But I am currently selling my copy used. It is in immaculate condition: disc, case and instructions, you can find it on amazon in the used section it is selling for 48.99. If you don't believe me you can try for yourself and let me know.

I'm sending my copy back. It's a mediocre game, only worth your time if you have someone to play with.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 10
Date: March 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I specifically pre-ordered it to play with my girlfriend.

The graphics are pretty... but not THAT pretty.

The AI isn't all that special. Enemies aren't that smart, and the game attempts to make up for stupid enemies by throwing more of them at you. The experience just doesn't feel as realistic as with pretty much any other game I've played in the last three years.

I echo the sentiment of scar_raver that it's much better when played with another human being. (Again, the AI issue) Ostensibly, you're able to control a computer-run "buddy" with voice over your headset, but thus far I don't find this to be a tenth as good as the voice command technology in the Rainbow Six series.

The design of the game (story and flow) is extremely linear, overall... and feels a bit canned. Stale canned. Oh, here's another situation where you're going to do a back-to-back shootout. Here's a spot where you have to advance, against a hail of gunfire, and (SURPRISE!) just happen to have a riot shield handy. (One of you holds the ballistic shield, and one of you fires around it to take out enemies) The game doesn't leave it up to you when to implement a given tactic. I mean... you could choose to go without the riot-shield, but that'd be suicide. AoT's hyperlinear nature is only confirmed by using the game's "GPS mode," pressing the back-button to reveal a dotted line, telling you where to go, and what to do. I got to feel a little like a chimpanzee in the first two campaign missions.

I spent only fifteen to thirty minutes playing online in multiplayer... but with only four maximum gamers in a given game (two to a side), and the limited maps I saw, I wasn't real impressed. Army of Two will not hold my interest once I've solved the campaign with my girlfriend... I might go back and cooperatively play the campaign with some other online friends, but that's it.

I'm afraid that Call of Duty 4 has spoiled me... so many other shooters just don't seem to make the grade, after playing COD4. I had to stick with it, to tolerate my way through perpetual irritation with the combat mode in Mass Effect for awhile, until I got sucked into the story and began enjoying that game in its own right.

I'm sorry... I guess this is sounding like a fairly negative review. In fact, the game rates a 6-7/10 on my internal scale. It's especially worth getting IF you have someone at home to cooperatively play through it with. There are so few decent titles which you can do that on. (The lack of this may well be my #1 beef with COD4)

***

And, I have a MAJOR beef with GameStop. They had a deal going for months, where you could get a code for TWO extra weapons if you pre-ordered Army of Two from them. In fact, I only got ONE weapon when I entered the code... the machine-gun only. The promised sniper-rifle is nowhere to be found. I called GameStop's Customer Service line (1-800-883-8895) and they verified they are aware of the issue, and are talking to the developer about a patch to fix the issue. Everyone who bought into this deal was cheated out of their money.

Army of Two Hours of Gameplay

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 11
Date: March 13, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game will likely top 2008 as the "most dissapointing" game of the year. If you want a shooter buy Gears of War, Call of Duty 4 or Frontlines. All of those games deliver much more entertainment in nearly every aspect. That said in Army of Two the graphics are well done,however, the rest of the game definately seemed rush. There are many characters in the game who appear to have other stories/missions behind them yet never develop.Some of the cutscenes are clearly shifted from alternate story/timelines that were not included. For those who enjoy single play you will be dissapointed to know this game can be completed easily in just a couple hours (especially on co-op).The AI is terrible...it will provide little to no challenge most of the time. The boss fights are a joke. Ammo is way too scarce for a game of this style.Best of all the controls were probably designed the day before launch as it is extremely annoying to maneuver in close quarters and on co-op will amount to a few accidental head slaps that delay both your control for a few seconds, long enough to die and end up back at the checkpoint.
The xbox live multi-play is simply 2v2...no deathmatch, no big team battles,no customization of weapons/character/armor (you know...the standard). The matching system for multi-play is poorly designed and leaves few clues to if it is actually searching for others. Dont fall into the hype and at the very least...rent this game first.

Disapointment

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 15, 2008
Author: Amazon User

After watching the commercials on TV I thought this game looked great. However After playing it through I was very disappointed. The game didn't look to bad visually, but other than that there isn't a lot to be excited about. The thing that was very annoying was that the aiming seemed like it was unresponsive even when I put it on the highest setting. The campaign was short and I beat it in under 6 hours. The online multiplayer has an interesting concept in working co-operatively with a partner to complete various objectives, but it's hampered by the slow gameplay. If you really have your heart set on buying this game , I strongly, STRONGLY suggest renting it before hand.

Good Game not Great

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: March 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

If you are considering getting this game because you already enjoyed Gears of War and Call of Duty 4, I would highly suggest you rent the game first. I am a big fan of CoD4 and even a bigger fan of GoW. Although I did like Army of Two I would have to say I'm a bit disappointed. On the plus side the game looks great. Campaign was fun but it felt a bit short. I like aggro and it plays well.

My biggest disappointment is the online multi-player. I've played online 4 times and the lag and online game play was very very frustrating. Maybe EA can fix this with an update but until they do, I may sell this game.

Dont waste your $60!!!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: March 25, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game is the same thing over and over and over. Run and shoot. The graphics are great. The dialogue is horrible to say the least and the game is extremely easy. YOu can literally get shot dozens and dozens of times before you go down and then your partnet can come and revive you. I mus have played through half the game on my first go before I finally died and that was because I wanted to see what it took to finally get killed. Man I was disappointed with this crappy game. Please spend you money of COD4 if you dont already have it, if this game is worth $60, COD4 is worth $600 in comparison

A HUGE letdown

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: March 31, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I got this game with my friend because we were waiting for months before its release. We got it and the first 15 minutes were fun. It got repetitive and boring and its exactly like gears of war. The game is really really short and not worth the money, we beat it in 2 nights and i traded it in the next day. EA messed up on this one

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