365//365: Day 020 – Army of Two: The 40th Day (360)

Army of Two helped usher in the new era of co-op gameplay. Unlike Resident Evil 5 or Kane & Lynch, the AI co-op gameplay was competent enough to play solo and not feel severely handicapped by a poorly coded partner that doesn’t hold up their end, other than occasional AI dragging quirks. For the most part, it was an enjoyable, single player or co-op, and definitely deserved to have a sequel released sooner than later. Less than two years later, we are given Army of Two: The 40th Day. While a couple of the features have been tweaked for the better, the rest of the title feels like it was in a 40 day development cycle.

The 40th Day’s shortcomings come from just about every facet. Visually, the lighting on your characters occasionally flickers around. When I’m in a dark area, devoid of any major light sources, panning my camera around sometimes lights up my character as if he was standing in the sun. On the flip side, when standing out in the sun with no shade around me,  Salem or Rios become shaded, as if they are hiding in a dark corner. While Salem and Rios do look exceptionally well detailed, and have plenty of color to them, the overall color palette throughout your adventure is quite drab, making the bulk of the world around you feel lifeless. Even with darker overtones for the game, that shouldn’t be an excuse to make your experience devoid of a better color selection. There’s one stage where it’s mostly gray colored environments, with red newspaper clippings on the ground and the walls, making it feel almost like a third person level of Mirror’s Edge. Throughout the beginning of the game, as well as some bits throughout, things are constantly blowing up and crashing down in the most implausible ways imaginable, sometimes to your advantage. Most of the time, it looks barely passable, though not only do you not get that adrenaline rush that you’d expect, but often times, the pieces of building falling down lack any sort of detail to it.

The moral decisions, a new addition to the series, feels like it was thrown in there, with no important impact to your actions, other than either a few buck in the proverbial wallet, or help gain certain achievements/trophies. You don’t feel like you’re benefiting anyone or anything by playing nice, and not accidentally killing a security guard, or intentionally killing a Bengal tiger. There’s even a moral choice involving an 8 year old boy and a sniper, which does create chatter about the incident a scene later, if you chose the negative choice, but it all feels more like a shock value that’s worth nothing. You’re asked about his whereabouts by the doctor that has you running around the hospital, and Salem says “never heard of him” and that was the end of it. It doesn’t outright affect the pace of the game, or even what lies ahead of you. The only reason I want to save hostages was to get a reward for each saved. There is no moral involve with any of these decisions – its a question of whether or not I want more money or not?

Rios is helping to drag Salem away from The 40th Day and back to 2008.

Then there are the bugs you sporadically stumble upon. The first one was not even an hour into the game. I had Feign Death right before a cut scene (unbeknown to me). When the cut scene was over, I am in a standing position, able to turn around 360 degrees, yet couldn’t aim, shoot, change weapons, grab aggro, nothing. I had to quit to the title screen and redo that portion all over. Can’t forget the couple of times where I had to “Push A” to help my partner push open a revolving door, and the game wouldn’t allow me, no matter where I stood. I couldn’t even get my partner to get off the door so I could initiate the action first. Then there’s random system lock ups throughout, which have happened to me several times on the first play-through alone. Nothing initiated it – I was just playing the game as usual. There’s an apparent lack of quality control with The 40th Day, and it hurts the overall package considerably.

The Versus multiplayer portion of The 40th Day is a complete throw away, offering nothing exciting, nor entertaining from any other third person online shooter. In fact, I’ve battled more against the crippling lag in most of the games I played than whatever skill sets my opponents may, or may not have had. When I do get into a lag free game, it would suddenly start to stutter more than Porky Pig in a speed reading contest. Whether you’re you have lag teleportation bouts or a smooth game going, it’s nothing special, nor worth investing any amount of your time on.

It’s not all negative with The 40th Day. The gameplay has been tightened up somewhat over the first installment. While your partner was competent in the first title, the sequel has your AI partner feeling a bit more natural. Setting him on an aggressive hold, he will lay a more efficient and stronger cover fire than he did in the previous game. On occasions, your partner will stutter in place when you want to advance the stage in some form, but it’s not a consistent thing. CPU AI is on a similar boat, evading grenades hurled at them, though not often enough, and never take an aggressive enough advancement towards your position. They use cover quite a bit, though leave themselves open for easy kills a little too frequently. Even when they don’t stand out in the open, it’s pretty entertaining to mow down droves of enemies, more so with a friend along side you, though thankfully the partner AI can definitely hold its own.

In regards to the A/V department, things have improved in certain aspects, but got worse in others. I already mentioned the drab, depressing color palette used in The 40th Day, though I have to admit that the visual quality of Salem and Rios is quite appreciated. Since I lack the ability to take proper screen caps, I have to search other web sites for screen shots to use. Unfortunately, most of the ones I ran into are not accurate in game images, and portray the visuals to be much better than they really are.

The multiplayer in The 40th Day has more choppiness than Vince Shlomi and a pound of vegetables.

The dialog between Rios and Salem, as well as most characters you encounter throughout the game, are less drivel fueled, namely in the cheesy one liner department. There are some in the game, notably completing the zoo level, with Salem muttering “Worse. Zoo. Ever.” right before you exit the stage. The quality of the voice acting, however, as well as the explosions, gun fire and so on, is good enough to help carry the game along without much eye rolling.

In the end though, is it even worth playing Army of Two: The 40th Day, with all the bugs and other annoyances littered across the game? If anything, it’s worth a rental, that’s for sure. When the bugs don’t bite down on you, and with or without a co-op partner, it’s a barely passable title to play through at least once, though memorable only because of the many shortcomings. As for a long term investment, if you have a buddy to play along side with, there’s a limited amount of extra replay value to be had, until you realize how remarkably bland the experience is. Give it a rental, just don’t put down $60 and expect anything you’ll be playing again a week after the fact.

Quickly, Salem! Put your mask down, before what hits the fan starts flying towards you!

Rating: 5.5