Army of Two: The 40th Day- hands-on

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Tackling every criticism of the first game with gusto

The new holographic display helped out slightly. At the touch of a button, you can bring up a Dead Space-like semi-translucent map that floats in front of your character. Known enemy locations are highlighted, and it even projects a green line on the floor directing you to your current objective. You can also ‘tag’ enemies you want your partner to ‘take care of’.

Co-op has seen even more improvements as well. It’s a feature a lot of developers tend to ignore these days – either due to the increasing difficulty of implementing it in HD games, or because they simply forget that a lot of people still play that way – so it’s a pleasant surprise that Army of Two will still let you work through the campaign in split-screen.

Your list of co-op abilities has increased, and they’re now more ‘organic’: you’ll be able to perform them at any time rather than at prescribed moments. You can now take enemies hostage, feign your own death and even mock surrender, giving your partner a chance to sneak up on enemies from behind.

It’s always a pleasure, and frankly a bit of a shock, to find that a developer has noted every criticism of an original game, and made a concerted effort to improve on all of them. The version we saw was far from finished, so we don’t yet know if 40th Day will be more polished and intuitive than the first AoT – but EA Montreal are definitely on the right track.

Nov 6, 2009

Tom Sykes
Tom Sykes
When he's not dying repeatedly in roguelikes, Tom spends most of his working days writing freelance articles, watching ITV game shows, or acting as a butler for his cat. He's been writing about games since 2008, and he's still waiting on that Vagrant Story 2 reveal.