As we mentioned in our review of the first Army of Two (we’ll call it Army of Two: 1) when people initially see you playing Army of Two they immediately think of Gears of War. Sadly the similarities are only cosmetic and the confusion doesn’t last long. Army of Two: The 40th Day (the subtitle presumably because Army of Two: 2 sounds stupid – how about we refer to it as simply ‘TFD’ from now on?) is the sequel to Army of Two: 1 that was released back in 2008. We liked it in a kind of sub-Gears of War way and thought the franchise had possibilities, despite some reservations about the gameplay and the worryingly casual, high-fiving, air-guitaring attitude the two main protagonists Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem have towards the countless enemies they slaughter and the job they’re doing.

A few years after the events of the first game our two-man army is in Shanghai because that’s where they’ve decided to base their very own PMC (Private Military Corporation) - when suddenly, as luck would have it, the city comes under a violent barrage of missile attacks causing skyscrapers to collapse and sending the city into chaos! The destruction makes 9-11 look like a minor incident and is more like the end of Fight Club with a smattering of Cloverfield. All around heavily armed mercenary-looking types working for an organisation only known as The 40th Day are imprisoning and brutalising the civilian population and it’s your job to find out what the heck is going on and save the day.

Some of TFD's other co-op features are compulsory; dragging a downed partner to cover and healing him (you can’t finish a level on your own) is obviously a must-have game element, and I like the new ‘mock surrender’ feature, but the step-up jumps to get to higher levels, slo-mo back-to-back shoot-outs, or doors that inexplicably need the two of you to open often seem to be there just for the sake of co-op play and add nothing to the proceedings. Co-op sniping has been made less of a set piece and has therefore become a forgettable and unnecessary gismo, the ‘mock surrender’ is a nice idea but sometimes your AI partner doesn’t get the idea and starts shooting anyway. A new feature that allows you to sneak up behind and grab an enemy officer to take him hostage, using him as a human shield and making his underlings surrender never gets tired though, and then having the moral decision whether to tie the captured/surrendered enemy up or execute them is entirely up to you. The game throws up several of these moral decisions throughout and you’ll often get a comic book style sequence showing you the consequences of your actions, sometimes good and sometimes bad. I’m not sure what the thinking was behind these fable-like tales and the graphical style doesn’t really fit with the rest of the game. They seem to say to you “shit happens” and “what goes around comes around”, “you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t” but the game does give you the opportunity be nice or nasty, and some people will like that and want to play the game through twice in order to see both outcomes.

A couple of things that have been dropped from the first game are the vehicle and parachute drop sections; the hovercraft levels weren’t exactly brilliant and were almost dropped from the first game (an APC and a tank level supposedly were dropped), but were thankfully kept in as they added some variety, so why there are none in this sequel mystifies me – if the developer realised they weren’t very good it would have been nice if they’d have been improved rather than dropped from the game concept altogether. Vehicles are an integral part of modern warfare and the enemies you fight in TFD have plenty of them, so why shouldn’t Tyson and Elliott have some wheels (or tracks)? You started one of the standout missions in the original game by parachute, and as TFD is set entirely in Shanghai parachute drops would be rather redundant, but there’s nothing in TFD to compare, so it’s another reason why the game pales in comparison.

Online or split screen TFD works really well as a co-op shooter. The seesaw rhythm of covering and flanking maneuvers work so naturally because of the aggro feature, and the neatly designed maps may be terribly linear but offer some decent sized locations and plenty of cover from what are frequently powerful and aggressive enemies. The campaign seemed to be over quickly, a claimed 10 hours was over in a little over 7 for me, playing on the highest ‘Contractor’ setting – and frankly unless you’re a gamerpoints addict it’s unlikely you’ll want to play the campaign through a second time as fighting your way across the city’s a dull and repetitive journey compared to the first game that saw Rios and Salem jetting to varied locations around the world.

As well as playing the co-op campaign mode online there’s a 2 Vs 2 deathmatch mode. This plays reasonably well as a pure cover shooter, although I don’t think it works as well as the campaign mode, but as ever co-operation is the key. There are also new 10-player team modes called Control (King of the Hill-style take and hold designated control points) and Warzone (capture, destroy or defend random objectives). The main problem I had with these modes is that, unlike the co-op, and most other online shooters including Gears 2, Halo 3, ODST and Modern Warfare 2 they seem to suffer badly from lag, and a number of deaths tended to be sudden, violent and lag-assisted. Lag issues were the main reason why EA region-locked the original game, so it’s presumably a problem with the game engine that they didn’t manage to fix. A lot of people also seem to be suffering from disconnection problems and that’s not a good thing when you’re so reliant on a partner.

The damage indicator isn’t the exactly helpful in the offline campaign mode (the screen only goes a delicate pink even when you’re dead) but online it seems vague when you need it most and there’s little chance of escaping once you’ve been tagged, so this leads to the game being a stilted, start-stop-start affair, not unlike the Gears of War multiplayer games. If you liked those, you’ll probably like this, but I suspect you won’t play it for as long, even if you find yourself buddy’ed-up with a good partner or team who heal you when you’re downed and understand the importance of playing as a team.

What may save TFD’s online play from being utterly forgettable is its “bonus” mode called Extraction, it’s basically a duplicate of Gears 2’s Horde mode, or ODST’s Firefight; it’s you and 3 buddies against wave after wave of AI enemies of varying numbers and strengths as you try as work your way through 4 maps. If you liked Horde or Firefight, you’ll like this – nuff said. I should probably mention that this is a bonus mode only available with some purchases of the game, but will be open to all after February 12th.

Overall TFD is a hugely disappointing sequel to one of my favourite games of 2008. It’s often corny, always over dramatic and once again painfully… well… American. If (as several of my US friends have done) an American ever asks you why the rest of the world seems to hate them then just point to the testosterone-overdosed, over-competitive chest-bumping, high-fiving jingoism that TFD and so many American sports exude. But personal taste aside, in TFD there’s no need for it, and it certainly adds nothing to the game or the story, which at its core is a buddy-movie-game. The unimpressive graphics are a major letdown and the similar locations make the game feel even shorter than it actually is. The original game had a couple of extremely memorable levels but TFD will have you struggling to remember any particular standout moment, battling your way through a zoo is probably the best of a bad bunch. The development team seems to have spent too much time on the multiplayer aspects (which haven’t turned out to be particularly good) and skimped on the campaign, which is never a wise idea in an ever-increasingly competitive genre. The first person/third person shooter genre is supported by a large percentage of gamers who will never play an online multiplayer game again either because of bad experiences in the past or because they just don’t like playing online games. TFD will do little to tempt them back as its co-op campaign mode isn’t as good as the original game’s and the competitive multiplayer aspects aren’t as playable or varied as much of the competition. Overall TFD is an unexpected let down - as a high-profile sequel I was expecting a much grander experience.