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NEWS & REVIEWS

Army of Two: The 40th Day Review

I am a fan of co-op games. I enjoy playing a game with a friend, so naturally Army of Two was a game on my radar. I was very underwhelmed with the first game, and I figured EA Montreal could take their core concepts, and build a compelling and exciting sequel. Although new ideas are introduced, and with more emphasis could have made a better game, are secondary and have little effect on the general experience which is largely the same as the first game.

You start the game on a mission for your mercenary company T.W.O. in Shanghai. Shortly into the mission/tutorial all hell breaks loose around you as buildings explode and planes crash right below you. At that point, your mission becomes leaving Shanghai alive, making moral decisions along the way. The moral decisions could have been better, they are generally extreme situations with no moral ambiguity. Either you are very evil, or very good, there isn’t much middle ground, and it has a limited effect on the gameplay. Generally, the evil decisions result in more money or weapons, while the good decisions hardly give you anything except maybe warm fuzzy feelings? As far as story goes, both myself and my co-op partner found it made no sense at all. Once you finally get to the end of the game, you get a horrible evil mastermind explanation for the destruction of Shanghai, and then it’s over. It might be one of the worst stories I have experienced from games I have played in recent memory.

If you played the first Army of Two, you’ll know what to expect while playing The 40th Day. This is a co-op third person shooter with a cover system. Although some aspects are a bit more refined, I still had trouble with the context sensitive action button. My biggest problem was while trying to revive my partner, I would end up sprinting forward instead and being killed. The shooting mechanics work fine, but it reminds me so much of other better games with more exciting shootouts. Army of Two felt so repetitive, with no real variety aside from the odd elite type enemy. The option to sneak around in certain parts was welcome, allowing you to avoid some altercations simply by grabbing hold of a high ranking enemy and forcing the lower ranks to drop to their knees, while your partner ties them up. The cover system also works really well, you can seamlessly move into and out of cover with natural movement, so you never feel stuck to cover like most cover based third person shooters.

Initially the city falling apart around you was cool, but that also got repetitive. You’ll be running along and all of the sudden everything stops to show you another building falling apart, and you can’t skip any cut scenes! So second time through (if you can muster the will), you’ll probably be real tired of these annoying pauses. The 40th Day is also visually very similar to its predecessor. By today’s standards, it looks very average and plain. Some environments looked neat, and one level in particular looked snazzy with everything a washed out grey except for some bright red flyers sprinkled around.

One major problem I had during my experience was playing co-op online with a friend. Both of us have very stable connections, and were frustrated to find our game would constantly disconnect on us. At least every 15 minutes the game would stop us cold telling each of us that the other had disconnected from the game, yet our Live party remained intact. If we were starting to get on a roll, it would be quickly halted by these constant disconnects. Another issue we had would be both our consoles freezing at the same time.

Another unimpressive feature is the sound. Though the music sounded pretty good later on in the game, the sound the guns made was pathetic. I found for some reason they were really quiet and didn’t sound like they were packing any kind of real punch. Everything else sounded normal, but even with a muzzle enhancer the guns I used sounded too quiet. I want my guns to make a bang, not sound like a pea shooter.

You could probably expect to finish The 40th Day in about 6 hours your first time through. If you play online, perhaps expect to play double that if your experience is anything like mine with constant disconnects. There is a competitive online multiplayer mode as well focusing on the co-op mechanics, but poor hit detection and laggy servers won’t garner much longevity beyond the somewhat boring single player campaign.

Despite all that being said I didn’t hate playing Army of Two: The 40th Day, but I didn’t like it much either. It is a relatively competent shooter, but with so many other better games out there with co-op, I can’t highly recommend this to everyone. The partner AI is decent enough to enjoy the experience single player, and split screen co-op would probably be the way to go if you have similar online issues like I did. I think the most fun I had was laughing with my buddy about how ridiculous some of the stuff in this game was. Approach this one with caution.

Game Access Score – 2.5/5

NEWS

Front Mission Evolved prepares for NA release this spring

Typically a strategy RPG franchise; Front Mission Evolved will take the series to third person action. Square Enix will publish the Double Helix (Silent Hill: Homecoming) developed game and aims for a Spring 2010 release which is a window that opens up at the end of March. I’ve enjoyed the SRPG Front Mission games, but I’m a little skeptical on the franchise’s turn to third person action.

Super Street Fighter IV dated April 27; Lost Planet 2 on May 18

Both the titles were recently delayed from their original Q1 release schedule, but Capcom has come out and given us some actual dates. Super Street Fighter IV, the anticipated expansion with new characters and moves, will hit shelves on April 27th at an expected discounted price. Shortly after that, Lost Planet 2 will deliver yet another co-op focused game with mountain-sized boss battles on May 18th. With all these big budget games coming out this year, at least we won’t bored!

God of War III hits NA on March 16

This is what I’m sure most of the PS3 owners have been waiting for this year. The big one: God of War 3. On March 16th, God of War 3 will ship to retailers and the PS3 debut of this series will finally see the light of day. So mark your calendars, possibly one of the biggest releases of the year is only a month and a half away…

LAST WEEK'S NEWS & REVIEWS

Darksiders Review

Darksiders seemed like a bit of a Dark Horse releasing in a busy first quarter full of delayed winter titles. It’s a good thing it came out early, since it is a surprisingly decent game that is worth a rental. It won’t take long to figure out that Darksiders is a game strongly inspired by other games. Most notably, it plays like a mature Zelda game. Many of its game mechanics seem to be a direct homage to Zelda, with little additions inspired by other games as well. Because of this, Darksiders is far from an original experience, yet all the borrowed components never feel cheap, and they are well thought out and realized through the duration of the game.

You’ll start the game with all your available powers and abilities, and through a story event, will then have all your powers removed and you’ll have to reacquire them while playing through the campaign. You play as War, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, who is framed for being responsible for essentially causing a war to break out between heaven and hell. You are granted the opportunity to return to Earth and attempt to investigate who framed you, with the catch that you’ll have a wise-cracking companion attached to you to make sure you stay in line. All the characters are voiced surprisingly well, and as War you are appropriately “badass”. Though the writing is a little shaky and predictable, it is still a decent tale of redemption and revenge.

Like Zelda, the game splits pretty evenly between combat and platforming/puzzle solving. Though the combat could have used more depth, the platforming and puzzles are very well done. I enjoyed the puzzles, since the solution wasn’t immediately obvious, yet not hard enough to really stop your momentum. As I said, combat is on the shallow side. There are only 3 weapons, the main weapon being the most useful in virtually every situation. You can unlock combos and other abilities from the “merchant” Vulgrim when you exchange the souls you have acquired, but there just isn’t enough to lend much variety to the combat. Even though you are treated to a decent variety in enemies, it doesn’t take too long to figure out when they are about to attack.

Combat can also be incredibly frustrating when facing tougher enemies. Some enemy attacks do an insane amount of damage and are infuriatingly difficult to avoid. A lot of more powerful enemy attacks can’t be blocked, so you are forced to dodge. However, the controls aren’t tight enough to support your need to perform quick dodges. Also, a dodge is essentially a dash in your desired location, which is problematic since the enemies seem to follow you quite well with their desired attack. The finisher attacks can be quite satisfying however, especially after a brutal encounter. Despite that, the game is generally quite easy. With the exception of a few battles earlier in the game, I found as you progressed getting new abilities the enemies didn’t get too much harder. I even found the bosses to get easier as the game went on, culminating in a disgustingly easy final boss battle. That said, I was also playing on the hardest difficulty.

Though loud clanging of blades and shields amassed most of the sound during Darksiders, there is a nice soundtrack in there. Despite having the music maxed out, I still found it a little hard to hear, and would have liked to hear it better. That’s not to say the combat sounds got annoying, I was just really impressed with the way the music sounded.

If you play or have played World of Warcraft before, Darksiders’ visual style may look familiar. That’s another aspect that seemed to have been inspired by another game, as it looks like a more futuristic and next-gen take on the WoW style. Although the visuals had lots of polish and looked great, I encountered an obscene amount of screen tearing when exploring. Especially when I spun the camera around to get a look at the environment, I noticed a large amount of tearing that was a little distracting. Other than that though, Darksiders is a good dirty looking game.

I won’t spoil anything else borrowed from other games, but as you play, you will certainly notice items that seem to be directly inspired by other popular games.

An adventure clocking in at around 15-20 hours, it is certainly not a short quest, but doesn’t offer up much replay incentive. Although there is an annoying back tracking quest before the end of the game, it is brief enough not to completely sour the experience. Even though Darksiders lacks combat depth and originality, the homage it pays to the games that it borrows ideas from is done with polish. If you enjoy adventure games with a mature twist, Darksiders is definitely worth the rental.

Game Access Score – 3.5/5

NEWS

Last Rebellion heading to NA in February

Nippon Ichi’s latest next gen JRPG Last Rebellion for the Playstation 3 is expected to be release in February in North America. Q1 is turning into a huge cluster of JRPGs now with this, White Knight Chronicles, Final Fantasy XIII, and Resonance of Fate. If you are a JRPG fan looking to play all of these, I hope you have lots of spare time!

Writers Guild of America announces 2010 game writing nominations

The recently introduced WGA award for video game writing recognizes WGA members who have penned scripts for video games. Although the list has some questionable nominations, you are required to be a member of WGA in order to be recognized… And the nominations are:

Assassin’s Creed 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Wet
X-Men Origins: Wolverine

The awards show takes place on February 20th. So who do you think will win for best writing? Share your opinion on our Wall.

PlayStation Motion Controller's release date changed to fall 2010

Well whatever timing leverage Sony’s new motion controller had over Microsoft’s Project Natal has been lost. Instead of releasing in the spring this year, Sony has delayed the Motion Controller’s release to Fall 2010. Reasons cited for the delay was to provide a solid launch lineup of software titles to go along with the hardware. I would speculate that this will also give them more time to finally come up with a name for it…