E3 07: Army of Two - hands-on

Features
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We crash through this aggressively deep, unsubtly political two-man shooter

Customization also affects which merc your enemies pay the most attention to; if one of you has a gun that dwarfs what your partner is carrying, for example, then they'll focus their fire on him. Luckily, since you can mix and match gun parts - stocks, barrels and the like - you can also stick a big, bulletproof shield on your oversized shooter, making it a little safer for you to draw fire.

Another thing that determines how enemies react to you is "Aggro," the game's unique aggression-balancing system. Running around with guns blazing, killing dudes and blowing stuff up will build up your Aggro, drawing enemy fire toward you and away from your partner. If your partner starts getting aggressive as well, some of the Aggro is transferred back to him, and so on. If you manage to max out your Aggro, however, you'll start glowing red and dealing out four times the damage. Meanwhile, your partner will glow blue, indicating he's just entered stealth mode - which means enemies will completely ignore him. This makes it easy for him to sneak around to a flanking position and blow unsuspecting baddies away while they're training their fire on you. If you'd like to hurry this up, your partner can feign death for a little while, which will instantly transfer all the Aggro to you.

Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.