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Army of Two is a decent third-person shooter that unfortunately sticks its boot in its mouth. It does so by belittling volunteer armed services and selling a power-but-no-responsibility mercenary fantasy, part of which takes place in the modern-day Iraq war. It mostly plays fine. The Aggro system works well (whereby your partner can hold your enemies' attention while you flank), and the online multiplayer is hectic fun. But the way it broaches and then mishandles such a controversial modern day issue is far from army strong.
The story follows Salem and Rios, two mercenaries who fight terror for big bucks with big guns. As they battle through ambush after ambush, it begins to dawn on them that someone within their own organization is selling them out and setting them up. That's right, one bad apple is screwing up the privatized military business for the rest of the upstanding mercenaries. Neither Rios nor Salem engages in any dishonorable behavior, aside from making fun of the Army for being so slow and ill-equipped. That would be fine if the Army they were making fun of were the Venusian Army. Or conversely, if Blackwater mercenaries in the real world hadn't been asked to leave Iraq for flipping out and massacring its civilians. But in Army of Two, there's no such thing as a civilian. If they aren't good guys, they're terrorists.
The game itself is a lightly tactical third-person shooter in which you take on terrorists from Somalia to Miami by shooting them with guns, punching out their lights, and hitting them with car doors--all while wearing a scary-looking goalie mask. As you thwart terror and complete missions, you earn cash that can be spent on awesome guns. From there, you can spend even more money pimping out stocks, adding grenade launcher attachments and even gold plating.
But with all this, you'll have a hell of a time hitting anything. Sure, you can stop, aim, and quickly kill a stationary target with a headshot. But if you're trying to run and shoot, you won't do nearly as much damage with that pimped-out AUG as you'd like. This was probably done to force you to rely on your teammate, but it seems like an unnecessary handicap all the same. Even worse, enemies have incongruous visible life bars, and some of them can take more bullets than a terminator. To top it all off, they have superior aim and can hit you just as easily from 50 feet as they can from five. Talk about asymmetrical warfare.
To keep yourself and your partner alive, you have to take advantage of the Aggro system. Borrowed from online role-playing games, Aggro is an artificial intelligence system that makes enemies focus on whoever is doing the most damage and ignore the person doing the least. The basic idea is to have one guy draw all the enemy fire while the other one sneaks around back and shoots everybody dead. It isn't rocket science, but coordinating attacks with a friend or with the CPU is still rewarding. Sometimes, one plus one equals fun.
