Army of Two: The 40th Day


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I enjoyed playing the first game too but in all fairness, it was a pile of ****.

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Just ordered the first game, demo was fun BEFORE EA's servers took a crap all over my friend and i. We literally put our controllers down and let our characters do their own thing...walk into walls, walk in place. Eventually turned it off but it was fun while it lasted, can't wait to have the full game now :)

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not surprised by some of the comments above, i love me some of that teen spirit. hmm all those hormones.

the first AoT was good - solid action, good visuals, passable story and even some memorable one liners. will be getting the sequel when it comes out.

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My friend and I got bored of the first one. It just wasn't fun at all.

I will not be buying this, unless they add some fun to it.

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My friend and I got bored of the first one. It just wasn't fun at all.

I will not be buying this, unless they add some fun to it.

Hmmm, I disagree completely, personally. It wasn't fun in solo, but in co-op it was honestly some of the most fun I've had in a game in the past few years. It was just fun, over-the-top action for me and my roommate :)

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Nothing compelled us to stay. We kept playing through a few levels because I didn't want my $60 to go to waste, but we never went back to it. Co-op fun is GoW 1 & 2 or Halo 3, for us at least.

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Army of Two shouldn't have a sequel. It was a bad idea and it should never be repeated.

But if EA want to throw money away, they can be my guest.

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I'm in the "It was fun" camp as well, played it with one of my housemates, who I've also done Gears 1+2 and Halo 3 co-op with, and we both really enjoyed it. Sometimes it's fun to be ten years old and get excited over a blinged out AK47 :)

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I started playing the first with a friend, got through one or two levels, then had to leave as another friend has crashed into land rover and had been taken to the hospital.

Guess I wasn't meant to play it, lol.

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Army of Two shouldn't have a sequel. It was a bad idea and it should never be repeated.

But if EA want to throw money away, they can be my guest.

+1 played it on ps3 even with co-op it was crap quite frankly. it didn't have any substance or anything really.

we know how EA are though

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The first one was intriguing, from a technical and playability standpoint, it was awful. Really awful. But nonetheless, I don't regret purchasing it, as the game had the critical element that's sorely lacking in alot of better games - it was bloody fun. Really fun to play with a friend. I'll see about The 40th Day :)

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[A-BLANKED] says:

Whoo, Army Of Two Sequel.

[b-BLANKED] says:

Great.

It'll be Army of Two Two.

Or Army of Two^2.

Or maybe Army of Three.

[A-BLANKED] says:

THREESOME D:

[b-BLANKED] says:

D=<

[A-BLANKED] says:

As if two weren't intimate enough.

[b-BLANKED] says:

It can always be gayer. Trust me.

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The first one was intriguing, from a technical and playability standpoint, it was awful. Really awful. But nonetheless, I don't regret purchasing it, as the game had the critical element that's sorely lacking in alot of better games - it was bloody fun. Really fun to play with a friend. I'll see about The 40th Day :)

Wait, what? You thought it was really awful from a playability standpoint, but it was "really fun" at the same time? I'm so lost.

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I loved the first game, purchased it for my PS3 and Xbox360. Sure it was short but the story mode kept me playing it over and over. I played co-op a couple times but didn't care for that, loved playing by myself (like I do with most games). Looking forward to this upcoming sequel.

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We all know that the first step on the path to recovery is admitting you have a problem. And while it might have been tough, the team at EA Montreal had no qualms in picking apart their 2008 best seller Army of Two. Despite the commercial success of the title ? with over two million units sold ? Army of Two was not a critical triumph. Many outlets quoted the biggest offenders as a generic story, weak cover mechanic, limited AI responsiveness and a cheese-factor that put Chester Cheetah to shame.

But that isn?t stopping the team behind The 40th Day. Instead, EA Montreal is using the feedback to push Army of Two to an entirely new level. Drawing similarities between the original Resident Evil and Tekken, they fault big ideas paired with a lack of focus as their downfall, and feel that the sequel is where everything will fall into place.

EA Montreal is approaching this transformation twofold. First, they are looking to take a more organic approach to co-op. While the co-op mechanics found in the original title were unique and fun, their implementation was choppy and often distracted from play. The goal is now to blend these mechanics with those found in a traditional shooter, using them at more appropriate times with fluid transitions.

The second part of the renovation stems from the game scenario itself. Departing from their role as strictly mercenaries, The 40th day isn?t supposed to feel like ?just another war game.? This time the goal is survival. Drawn from an exaggerate reality, Rios and Salem find themselves in Shanghai in the midst of a disaster. EA claims there won?t be any docks or warehouses in the title, with a promised 80 percent of all locations never having been seen in a shooter before. Being that one of our favorite levels in the original title was the flooded airport, we are all for disasters.

As for story specifics, we are still being kept in the dark. All we know is that another mercenary team is hunting the pair down, and neither they nor we know why. Because our heroes (we use the term lightly) don?t know what is happening around them the situation becomes even more dangerous. The game is said to unfold in a relatively short period of time, with Rios and Salem searching for a way out of the collapsing city.

Not to say that The 40th Day is devoid of all mercenary elements. Considering how much Salem likes his money, that would be near impossible. A bidding minigame has been added to facilitate small side missions, where you can vie for contracts to score extra dough.

The exotic local is not the only change in the upcoming title. A plethora of new features have been added after careful scrutiny of the first game. The list of concerns we brought to the demo were virtually rendered moot after nearly all of them were addressed before Q&A even began. First up was the subject of cover. A bit tedious and bulky in the first iteration, your character will now automatically take cover when pressed against an object, ducking down and out of site. From this position tapping forward with the analogue stick will cause the character to vault to the other side. Combined with the new sprint functionality, movement feels much more streamlined and allows you the freedom to concentrate on the offensive.

Secondly, the partner AI ? which was little more than deadweight in the first game ? has been revamped. The AI is now much more responsive and intelligent. After instructing our partner to advance, we watched him dash from cover to cover instead of running-and-gunning straight into trouble. Once instructed to halt, we were able to direct him to perform specific actions by placing our crosshairs on an unaware enemy. Commands included stealth kills and feigning surrender among others. We were told that virtually anything your character can do, you can now instruct your partner to do.

A new shoot-through mechanic has also been implemented, letting you take better advantage of enemy AI. Now, if an enemy decides to duck behind a wooden plank, nothing will keep you from picking them off. The mechanic also applies to some less glamorous situations, such as shooting through a hostage if deemed necessary. Even better, when you down an enemy you can now temporarily snag their weapon, bringing your total arsenal to four firearms at once.

The aforementioned hostages introduce a whole new motivation to play. As mentioned, the intended atmosphere of the title is one of recent and massive destruction. As such, the city looks like it was abandoned only moments ago. Paper flutters through the air. Dust still falls to the ground. An ambulance rests flipped on its side with a medical stretcher spilling from the back. Steam erupts from pipes neglected by fleeing residents. You can still hear sobs from people in shock as they wonder aimlessly, covered head to toe in soot.

These displaced citizens create a new atmosphere of choice in the game, allowing you to save or execute them as you desire. The 40th day integrates pre-combat AI, meaning the baddies won?t always know you are coming. More often than not they have their own agenda, in which you can choose to intervene. You can feign surrender to save several innocent civilians, or go in guns blazing and take out everyone indiscriminately. You can even take a hostage for yourself, giving them a lovetap to the head to keep them in line. If you decided to play the good guy card and save all the survivors, we were told that complicated stealth and co-op mechanics will be needed to get the job done.

As far as returning features, Aggro is still a central mechanic in the game, but has been toned down visually. Weapons customization is promised to return and is expected to be bigger and better than before. EA Montreal also plans to make multiplayer a much larger priority in the game this time around ? something that has us excited. The original title?s co-op/objective based online play was entertaining, except for the fact that we couldn?t find anyone else to play with. Twenty-minute matchmaking isn?t really our cup of tea.

The humor ? which seemed to make or break the original game ? will still be integrated into play. However, EA Montreal realized that the cheesy one-liners and stereotypical banter rubbed some gamers the wrong way. The goal this time around is to keep the characters full of personality, without stepping into annoying territory. Displacing humor onto secondary characters was presented as one potential avenue. In addition, part of infusing tangible personality back into Salem and Rios is implemented in the removal of their masks. In the 40th day the pair flips up their masks when not fighting so they can develop as characters and not just killers.

All the new features accumulated in one scenario that was nothing but epic in scope. Our guys found themselves on a rooftop in Shanghai with mercenaries in hot pursuit. As part of a mission objective they split to opposing ends of the building. Good thing they didn?t stick around the middle. Moments after reaching the rooftop the city begins to crumble. Planes fly overhead and bomb the city indiscriminately. Skyscrapers domino into each other. The explosions are nearly blinding, and one unlucky plane diverts from course, cleaving Salem and Rios? building in two. The chaos in the surrounding city is agitated by the arrival of the other mercenaries, who seem determined to pick off Salem and Rios from their isolated holding spots. An example of a refined co-op setpiece, now Salem has a limited amount of time to reach Rios before he is taken out.

EA Montreal?s Frankness regarding the shortcomings of the original Army of Two, Combined with a long list of new features aimed to help avoid past pitfalls, leaves us with high hopes for Army of Two: The 40th Day.

Source.

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  • 10 months later...

So I did not think this deserved it's own topic, even though this thread is almost a year old (from March 2009) but since no one has really been talking about this game I did not bother to make a new thread and figured I would just post in this one...

So has anyone else actually checked this game out? Myself an massiveterra actually both rented it through Gamefly, and we had every intention of actually playing it, but last night we decided it was not worth the effort, thanks to one of the worst checkpoint systems I have possibly ever seen in gaming history, and I have definitely seen some awful ones. What truly makes their checkpoint system disastrous is the fact that for whatever god forsaken reason, some cut scenes cannot be skipped no matter what.

So imagine you come across a boss in the game. The checkpoint before this boss first has you battle a little set of guys. Once you get through this little set of guys, you come across a boss, who then has about a 20-30 second cut scene before you can fight him that cannot be skipped. Usually not that big of a deal, but this boss also takes numerous attempts, lots of trial and error, to beat him. So because we could not figure out what we needed to do the first few times around, what wound up being maybe 10 minutes of actual game-play wound up being upwards of 45 minutes of absolute frustration thanks to the checkpoint system and cut scene that could not be skipped. We never beat the boss, and we both decided since it was still fairly early on in the game, that we had seen enough, and it was time to send the game back. Sure, perhaps we are just old men who suck at games and that is our own fault. But lets take a game like Gears Of War, which Army Of Two is obviously trying to mimic, I never once felt in Gears something was to challenging or frustrating that I was just going to give up on it.

Thing is they definitely made a better game than the first one. It actually is one of the better looking console games out there, at times it looks really damn good, and they refined practically every mechanic in the game and improved upon the original game in pretty much every way. Thanks to an archaic checkpoint and cut scene system, we decided it was not even worth our time.

So just wanted to say it is a shame, as this game had some potential. Oh well here is looking forward to clearing a queue spot by sending it back, might even get No More Heroes 2 for the Wii now since I have an open slot.

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recently rented this game. Been playing Co-Op with a friend on Xbox. We both love it. Some cool Co-op gameplay you can do. Enjoyed the first one, so didnt flinch on checking this out.

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