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my opinion is definitly a little slanted because I LOVED the first army of two. and i overall really enjoyed this one. it's alot of fun and the shooter mechanics and general third person interface work really well. they're not spectacular but they are functional, not flashy but good. however in making the sequal here it seems a little design by comitee comenced and the things that made me love the first AOT were determined to be the reason for the mediocre reaction to it. apparently in the era of gears of war and halo AOT of all things was deemed "too meathead" in it's humor and the characters were blasted as over macho idiots. i loved the humor and the characters. so the humor was toned down, Rios and salem are alot more subdued now and they really don't seem to enjoy their work like in the first one. seems to me if your gonna be a mercenary you might as well like doing it. and because it is the flavor of the month they added morality choices, i'm guessing to give depth to rios and salem. the moral choices are kind of interesting and give you some options as what jobs you want to accept but the choices tend to be rather crap.
The "new" humor i have to admit is not a step forward, the game is still funny but one stage is set in a zoo where all the animals have been murdered. it's suposed to set the tone and make you dislike the leader of the 40th day initiative as a maniac. but to me it's just morbid and the morality choice of killing a tiger to get the gun from his pen is really not cool. you can just buy the gun anyway so its not like you have to kill the tiger ever for completion purposes but honestly it's just kinda unnesisary.
for a co-op game the co-op has been toned down alot. i liked that AOT was all about two people, lots of step jumps and back to back moments and situations where you HAD to rely on your partner. in this game they took out the co-op snipe feature, not a big deal when playing with two people but it's just symptomatic of the design changes. there are two back-to-back moments in the whole game, and while one is totally awsome the other is just basic. i wasn't the biggest fan of the back-to-back mode in AOT but mostly because you had no control over it. if they made it so you could back-to-back under the right circumstances anytime. it'd be a great feature. also there are like 5 step jumps in the game and only 1 of them enables you to kill enemies while being held aloft to make it easier when you advance. the most glaring omission in the sequel is the really awsome rescue mechanics. in AOT you had to rescue injured npcs from time to time by slinging them over your shoulder and having your partner gun down enemies clearing a path for you since you could only use a pistol like this. it got annoying at times but that was the idea. and it was far and away better than any other escort mechanics i'd ever seen in a game. instead we have the equivalant of "puzzles" in the form of civilian rescues where you have to reach a highly ranked enemy and take him hostage to disarm the other soldiers. i do like this new feature it's pretty cool but with the ecception of one or two they're pretty straightforward.
now for the good
Rios's new voice actor is pretty bad ass, gives a real body to how he sounds, since he's a big guy it's a good thing. salems new voice actor is a pretty good guy, but not one i woulda chose for salem. the interactions between the two affects the dialoge and if you really piss each other off they more or less decide to go their seperate ways after they escape china. the supporting characters are good in this one, this game coulda used alot more alice murray in it but she is in it enough to make me happy. the new supporting characters are pretty good too, the crazy russian while not nearly as much fun as clyde is a nice addition to the cast list.
the weapon customisation is alot better in this one. once you buy a gun you get all the peices of it to use on any other gun that is similar enough to use it. i have the clip from an ak-47 jammed into an m4 with the barrel from another gun on the end of that. the customisable guns really affect the gameplay. in AOT my friend and i were so agressive the agro meter teetered back and forth and neither of us benefitted from it. in this game by putting silencers and the proper paint jobs on my guns, i build almost no agro and my friend goes in guns blazing with shotguns and hand cannons and i get to pick off guys left and right with my scoped assault rifle or even just run around busting heads with melee attacks. and the melee attacks are just wonderful, with or without the bayonette attachments you really put people in a hurt locker
overall the game has been improved, but i miss the old salem charm and while i enjoyed the story overall, it's the kind of story you'd find in a spin off. the first game was all about completeing paid jobs but since you worked at a company you had no choice over the jobs but you went around the world doing some great stuff. now you have your own company, you get to choose the jobs, you can go anywhere. so they chose to lock the second game with a short job and a long trek home. i really want them to do a true mercenaryish game where you get to choose from a long list of jobs and complete them in whatever order you decide or even in a preset order but have them be actual mercenary work. this is a story of two mercenary bad asses caught in a bad situation not two mercenaries doing their jobs. which is fine, but like i said, would make a nice sidestory.
i can't recomend or not recomend this game because it's got a very specific audience and i just happen to be a part of it. so the best advice i can give you is to rent it and try it for yourself, it's not as bad as people say it is but it's not as good as i say it is either.
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I must admit I was quite excited for The 40th Day. I enjoyed the previous installment in the series and had fairly high expectations for the second. So I sat down and put the game in and waited to be wowed. And then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. And then the credits rolled.
The 40th Day isn't an awful game but all the things that made the first game memorable like the co-op mechanisms, the tongue in cheek bromance, the ambiguous morality and the hard fighting brutality were completely underdeveloped here. The strength of a sequel over a new title is that a dev team can take all the popular aspects of a previous game and with that previous experience up the ante and redeliver a superior product based on those known strengths and weaknesses. Instead with the 40th Day you get exactly the same thing as before with an even thinner story (which I didn't thing possible) and a less engaging aesthetic. There is basically nothing here that makes me believe that a single lesson was learned from the previous title.
The controls are wonky but not intrusively bad. I did have an unexplainable bug where after I came back from turning off the game the Y-axis reset to un-inverted and I couldn't change it back. So if you're a freak of nature like me and play with an inverted Y-Axis be on your guard. The bug might make this game unplayable.
Also be warned: if you're looking for single player play time then don't put down your money on buying this game. I finished this game in less than six hours on Hard. There are a few unlockables but nothing to make it worth really playing through the campaign again. My recommendation would be to rent it and based off how much you enjoy the multi-player consider buying a copy then.
As far as the actual game play is concerned I was never once really engaged. The enemies have a very limited number of very jerky animations and their AI is unsatisfying. Like many poorly designed games that place an emphasis on the use of cover you'll often find yourself feeling like you're playing a game of wack-a-mole where you sit behind your cover and they sit behind theirs as you wait for them to lean out to ineffectually spray bullets at you. The enemies are not challenging and most of the episodes were you find yourself being challenged is when due to the design of the spawn points and the poor camera angles a half dozen opponents appear behind you. They're mostly carbon copies of each other, some with helmets and some with body armor but it's all the same deal. This is mixed up by having the occasional mini-boss which is decked out in heavy armor and has a special weapon like a Gatling gun or a grenade launcher. Between the combat cover mechanic and the cheesy pseudo-anime looking enemies I felt like I had traveled back in time fifteen years and was playing Time Crisis at the arcade again and not in a good way.
This is all interrupted by situations where you can take hostages and/or rescue civilians. While that sounds fun, and it is at first, it wears off about an hour into the game due to the fact that it's the same situation every time and you're never presented with a reason or a reward that makes you care. This brings me to the "moral choices" in the game. One of the great ideas in the game that had simply terrible execution the moral choices have almost no affect on the storyline or the game play. There are some items and weapon parts you can get one way as opposed to the other but they're not really a big deal and don't much alter the way you play the game or the manner in which it is or isn't enjoyed. You could be totally good or totally bad without significant alteration in the basic experience.
The second incredibly disappointing aspect of the game was the weapon modification. This is another idea that just never really seemed to get off the ground which is bizarre considering the attention and marketing it got as a component of the game. While you can change out barrels and add new sights or stocks, etc there is very little substantial difference in the weapon platforms. Once you buy one modification or the other it makes little difference what your "base" weapon is. Also the modifications themselves are limited and uninspired. With all the focus placed on attaining money in the game you'll find little reason to actually spend it as none of the mods have a real "fun" factor to them and their effect on your game play is minimal.
The multi-player is adequate but I don't see any shooter fan who owns a copy of Modern Warfare 2 spending enough time play The 40th Day to justify a purchase. You'll also notice that since you didn't pre-order a copy you don't yet have access to the Extraction feature of the game for a month. Note to EA: put a $10 mail in rebate or a poster or the such in your pre-orderers boxes. Leaving out an entire portion of your game for one of the most critical time periods for the sale of your product is incredibly stupid. Basically what EA has done is create the illusion of pre-orderers getting "extra material" by taking it away from everyone else. What a clever way to screw over your customers. Fire the guy that came up with that.
Bottomline: The game is a decent but not impressive 6 hours duck and shoot exercise. Unless you simply loved the multi-player portion of the first game I wouldn't recommend paying retail for this one. A rental isn't out of the question for a lazy weekend but with Bioshock 2, Mass Effect 2 and Modern Warfare 2, all vastly superior sequels, out or soon to be I'm not sure I'd argue you'll have more fun with this in your 360.
Pros:
*Good looking graphics, nice textures.
*Not too hard, not too easy.
*Curb stomping.
Subjective qualities:
*Simple combat mechanics.
*Check point save system.
*Not overly tactical, very shoot 'em up.
Cons:
*Terrible story.
*Very short.
*Undeveloped core concepts (weapon mods and moral choices).
*Painfully cliche aesthetics.
*Simple AI.
*Goofy Achievements.
*Little variation in play.
*Wonky Controls.
*You don't get the whole game you pay for on release (Extraction).
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My Shared-Screen Gaming Buddy & I have a very special place in our hearts for the Army Of Two (the first game), and we were waiting anxiously for the sequel.
For the co-op play specifically, they really did quite well for the most part in bringing a similar "tied-together/Depending-on-eachother" feeleing as the first game. Plenty of oportunities for co-op sniping, flush and ambush, and flanking tactics. Overall I would recomend it only for the co-op experience.
As Far as the Story and other design aspects go, its an entirely different matter, and the only reason I can't actually recomend the game. There were three main issues that prevailed for us.
First and the only real "Mechanics: issue; the A button "Hold-to-run" being the same as the "revive-partner" button, leading to quite a few mishaps and deaths.
Second; Most of the games story is revealed in audio clips found in Radios that you need to find and pick up in order to get the full story and make the "right" or "Wrong" decision when it comes time to make your choice in the game's "Morality Plays"; points in the game when you or your partner must make a choice that affects both of you. If you just want to run the game and have fun, the decisions that you make at these points are out of context and have seemingly unexpected results, basically leaving you at a loss as far as story goes.
(***POSSIBLE SPOILERS***)
And finally, at least for us, the game seemed to roll like a square tire. To explain what I mean, when the first game came out I remember all of the complaints centering about a "Lack of Morality", the collegeboyesque "Bro-mance", and the hot-button (at the time) issue of Private contracters making cracks while they kill people. What most Co-Op gamers found out after actually playing the game with a partner, was that is was fun, because it was basically Gun Porn, it was a fun romp, where every bullet was a blast, and you got to high five your parter for making a good kill. Things were dropped out to rush release, which they tried to cover with the three new levels release for free later, and to a certain extent, they succeded.
The problems that I had with AOT: 40th Day is that it seems like they overcorrected, and then to top it off, they left in elements from the Fun Romp first game that now make the Overcorrections they made for the second game stand out even more, and seem out of place. In the new game, you seem to pause every few minutes of gameplay, and you are forced to make a "morality call" as described aboved, or an all to often "save the hostages" scene, both of which bring a halting staggering step to gameplay that should be almost kinetic. The sections in-between where you are able to run-and-gun as with the first game are very fun, and you can still engage in the "Bro-mance", and for-christ-sake you can use a soda can as a silencer or put together the stupidest fun gun you can think of, but these things don't feel like they belong in same game as the morality plays and the very dark-toned cut-scenes, and (*****BIG SPOILERS NEXT!!!*****) not one, but two downer game endings.
It feels like, in all honesty, this should have been a completly different property, and had nothing to do with Salem & Rios, or at the least involved other charachter merely in their world.
P.S. A whole lot of very customizable guns, yes... but three pistols! Only three pistols! And you can't even do much with 'em. For Shame!
Honest reviews on Army of Two: The 40th Day - Xbox 360
This game is great!There are alot of guns and a ton of customization.They have barrels you can change,scopes,camos,shields,grenade launchers,ect.Also its quite long.There are 7chapters and each chapter takes about 45min-1hour to beat so about 7hours combined to beat the game.That the same amount as cod so don't complain.They also have online so thats cool.The graphics are good as well.A must buy for the money!
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I rented the game and feel I got my money's worth although I would love to try the "exclusive" horde-like co-op mode, it will be unlocked in another couple weeks.
The gameplay is solid for what it is , although even on the hardest game difficulty I finished solo with little challenge.
The real challenge was keeping my AI team mate from running headlong into a heavy enemy armed to the teeth with ballistic armor and grenade launcher.
But this game really isn't designed as a solo game , its best ordered up to play with a buddy online via matchmaking random or someone from your buddy list.
The game for as short as it was , was exciting , I really liked the moral choices , depending on which choice you made your given a mini-cutscene that looks like a graphic novel based upon your choice.
Sometimes someone you save who looks innocent turns out to be not so innocent. I enjoyed these little breaks from the action.
At its core AO2 is a 3rd person cover based game and it does it very well, if only the enemy AI were a little tougher .
The real beauty of the game is its online component but therein lies the problem with EA's finicky servers and the need to have an EA account separate from your XboxLive account to play MP.
Still the co-op campaign although really short can be finished easily in a weekend rental and then goof off in the MP modes for the remainder of the rental.
I REALLY wanted to try the exclusive horde mode but its still locked so I guess I'll try that out when its released to the public.
Overall great rental the graphics do look quite good overall ambiance is great with attention to detail , seeing a jumbo jet crash into the building your standing on is a sight to behold.
Would I buy it? Not yet maybe when it hits the $20 price point.
