From the moment Army of Two: The 40th Day one word comes to mind: average. 40th Day has very solid gameplay and some interesting features, but nothing makes it stand out from the rest and it becomes lost in the fold.

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The game begins with the main characters, Rios and Salem, arriving in Shanghai to meet their guide. After going through a tutorial mission, the city is attacked and the two race through the city to get out alive. And that is it. No being a hero here; just save their dispatcher and get out. The static location is a huge letdown after the globetrotting, decade-spanning first Army of Two. This is definitely an area that EA should have paid more attention to and put more effort in. Even merely a good story can make people want to keep playing a mediocre shooter. Army of Two: The 40th Day does not make the effort to give the players a compelling reason to continue play.

Sound also plays a role in bringing the action and warzone to life. All of the guns, including mods, have different realistic sound effects. Explosions are also very well done. The voice acting, as with the first outing, is very well done which is something that we have noticed is becoming a trend. Hopefully the days of terrible voice acting are over.

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The story aside, 40th Day does turn out to be a fairly solid shooter. This game was designed to be a cover shooter, which is why it is a third-person shooter instead of a first-person. Shooting on the run will prove to make combat much more difficult than letting the game features work for you. There is only one major issues with the system: unlike most third-person games, the camera does not switch shoulders while in cover based on which direction the character moves. Instead, the game forces players to click the right thumbstick to change the camera. That button choice makes it awkward to switch in the heat of battle, especially when most gamers will be used to this being an automatic feature. One well-done feature 40th Day brings back from the first game, and does very well, is aggro. As with its predecessor, this game was designed for co-op play; whether it be with another person or just a computer-controlled ally. The player(s) must work as a team to survive the many firefights. To this end, the game provides an aggro meter. The more one character shoots at the enemy, the more the enemy shoots back. On the meter this is represented by one half or the other filling with the characters given cover. Drawing aggro allows one of the characters to recover from damage, flank the bad guys, or take more careful aim. This is especially nice when playing with a computer ally, since in most games the enemy somehow always knows which one is the player's character.

40th Day is another game that falls victim to frustrating ally AI and the choice of four simple commands (follow, stay, advance, pull aggro) leads to more frustration than coordination. If ordered to follow, the ally may cross into the player's line of fire. When told to stay, he will stay, but often will not even fire from cover. When advancing he will do so recklessly and at the cost of taking massive amounts of damage. The only command that works the way intended is aggro, but that is like working against a ticking clock. It is not a good idea to have the enemy concentrating fire on a single character for too long. The campaign sees a marked improvement when played with another player. It becomes an enjoyable experience while working in tandem with a friend to escape Shanghai as it is destroyed.

As the player completes checkpoint and moral objectives, they are awarded money to spend on upgrades and weapons. Once again, this is a good feature in theory. The only thing really worth spending the money on is new weapons. Ultimately the weapons upgrades are mostly an aesthetic choice. While they alter the stats of the guns they are placed on, a player can kill the enemy just as easily without them as with them.

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As far as the graphics go, 40th day is by no means a bad looking game. Good lighting on the fairly complex environments helps give some depth to the torn apart city that you'll be spending the game shooting up. Texture work is also mostly pretty sharp with some nice effects for scars, veins, etc. Character models are also mostly good and have some nice detailing on them and the gear and weapons they sport. Explosions could be better but in general the dust and smoke of Shanghai falling apart around you looks great.

If the graphics are going to be compared to anything I would say they are similar to Mercenaries 2 which came out a while back. They are a bit over the top, big explosions, lots of smoke and debri's and generally they do a great job of making the city feel like a warzone ready to be torn apart.

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MULTIPLAYER:

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VALUE:

When its all said and done Army of Two is a pretty good game that has a campaign that will run you around 8 hours give or take a few. Once your done though you have the multiplayer options as well. How much you get out of the multiplayer though really depends on how much you enjoy the actual mechanics of the game. If you don't enjoy the cover mechanics for example you will probably not get much time out of the multiplayer. From what I played it was pretty fun but I could see it not having much for lasting appeal.

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SUMMARY: Army of Two: The 40th Day is not a bad game. But neither is it a good game. It gives no incentive to finish the game once it has been started. The multiplayer is fun, but not fun enough. With so many other shooters with greater depth available, 40th Day it will (rightly so) get passed over until some friends get bored some night and decide to go through the local shops bargain bin for something different.

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