army of two

Like its name suggests, Army of Two is a game focusing on a team of two people who are private military contractors or mercenaries, Elliot Salem and Tyson Rios. They were in the US 75th Ranger Regiment before joining the Security and Strategy Corporation (SSC), a private military company. Army of Two is a third person shooter game, which for me is much much better than a first person shooter (less pening) and it's especially made to be played by two people. Well, you can play alone because your AI partner is quite ok, as in he won't die easily and he'll follow your commands, but it's a lot more fun playing with a real buddy.

Okay, let me talk about its graphics first. Awesome! It's as nice as Gears of War (and much better than Kane and Lynch). The water texture is beautiful. But of course, you can't just admire the well-designed graphics and drop your gamepad when playing the game, because then you'll get killed by the enemy. Now about the controls, they're a bit slow when aiming but quite okay overall (again, better than Kane and Lynch).

What makes this game very unique is its Aggro. What's Aggro? Basically, it means attention, as in if you're shooting the enemy, then their attention will focus on you, so your Aggro will be higher than your partner. If you have a bigger and more powerful weapon, then your Aggro will be higher as well. There's an Aggro-meter in the screen where you can see how much Aggro you have. Well, what's the fuss about this Aggro thingy? If a player's Aggro is very high, then all the attention will be on him, and his partner will then be 'invisible'. The 'invisible' partner can then sneak up behind the enemy, or snipe them from long range or do any other strategical manoeuvres to defeat them.

help, i need somebody, help, not just anybody, help

If you get shot, you can regenerate your health by staying away from the line of fire. But if you keep getting shot, your screen will turn red and it's very difficult to see your surroundings. Then, you'll 'die' temporarily and you won't be able to move around anymore and your partner needs to come help heal you. He can drag you to a safe place to heal you and while he's doing that, you can still shoot enemies so that your partner doesn't get shot while healing you. If you're dying and you don't have enough time to find cover to regenerate your health, you can feign your death so that the enemy won't shoot you anymore, but if you do it again, they won't be fooled twice and they'll definitely make sure you die.

There are many instances in the game that require two people to do. There's the step jump, where a player helps his partner get up a wall and once his partner is up, he is then pulled up. There's also the co-op snipe, where the 2 players snipe one or two targets at the same time. This move is cool if you want to take out two guards at once, or if you want to blow up a gas barrel or tank. When parachuting and driving, one player controls the parachute/hovercraft while the other shoots or mans the turret respectively. If you're controlling the parachute, you'll need to stabilize it so that your partner can aim and shoot properly. But sometimes it's still difficult to shoot even though the parachute is very very stable (and somebody learned it the hard way *cough* Marwan [bukan nama sebenar] *cough*).

back to back

The back to back manoeuvre is really cool. It's like that ending scene in Mr. & Mrs. Smith where they're surrounded and they just shoot all their enemies while they're back to back. Well, in the movie they didn't get killed, but in the game, you can get killed if they keep on shooting you. What? You haven't watched Mr. & Mrs. Smith? Then, too bad for you, you now know the ending. Heh.

Another unique thing about the game is its weapons system. You can't pick up weapons as you go along, you can only pick up ammunitions. The weapons need to be bought. There's a wide range of weapons to choose from and they can be upgraded once you buy them. And if you have a lot of money, you can even 'pimp' your gun, which means that your weapon will have a gold/silver coating. Cool. You can also waste your money by buying masks, which doesn't make any difference to your stats. Hyree and I have already pimped many of our weapons and we've also bought masks for our characters. Money wasters!

For me, the bad thing about the game is that most of the enemies are Muslim terrorists. There are even suicide bombers in a mission in Afghanistan. They come barging at you before exploding literally in your face. These terrorists really give Islam a bad name. So sad.

Anyway, we (Hyree, Ammir, Pear and me) have all finished the whole campaign each. Once you've finished, you automatically own all the primary weapons available. Hyree and I have already started playing the game again using the hardest level, Professional. We've finished the third mission and there's three more to go. Oh we've also finished playing Halo 3 last week, or was it the week before. It's a first person shooter game, so I wasn't pretty much interested to play, but main je. The game was quite okay though. Marwan's currently playing Army of Two with Ammir now. He still hasn't finished it yet, but he's nearly there. Hmm, I'd better plug my ears while he's finishing the game. Heh.