Leveling Down

Army of Two: The 40th Day improves upon its successor, but by how much?

Outside of Final Fantasy XIII, t’s been an EA month of gaming for me these past several weeks. I’ve played through Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Dante’s Inferno, Army of Two: The 40th Day, and now I’m getting into Mass Effect 2. Fresh off my mediocre time with Dante’s Inferno, I decided to plow through Army of Two: The 40th Day since I had a feeling I wouldn’t be holding onto either game much longer. If you remember my review of the first, I thought it was a relatively decent title, as it presented an interesting aggro mechanic but it was far too short. The second one continues the primary mechanics of the first, but also includes some improvements. Are they enough to make the sequel enjoyable and necessary?
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My fond memories of Dragon Age: Origins have been dulled by the number of extra DLC that “expand” the game.

Last Friday I posted about how I felt that EA’s Project $10 initiative is working, and I’m a supporter of it. Hey, I’m all for supporting developers and publishers to make money off their own products and if it came down to it, I wouldn’t mind if the used market disappeared altogether. EA has been coming back into the spotlight in a positive way with gamers these days, while Activision has gone the other way. But there’s one thing that EA is now more guilty of than others at this point that I am annoyed with: DLC for single player games. Read on for my thoughts why.

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Amazon’s gaming deal of the day is Fallout 3 – unfortunately, only the PS3 version is on sale. If you haven’t played the game that cmfl3x and I both rate as our game of the year for 2008, you don’t know what you’re missing. Pick it up…now!

Also consider these two recent price drops on EA PS3 games as well:
Mercenaries 2 $19.99 (360 version is still $29.99) [Amazon.com]
Battlefield: Bad Company $19.99 (360 version is still $29.99) [Amazon.com]
Army of Two $19.99 (360 version is also $19.99) [Amazon.com]

Fallout 3 PS3 $34.98 [Amazon.com]

Army of Two, the first shooter to incorporate the concept of aggro

My brother got me this game for my birthday last month, and another friend got it too  so I’ve been playing it here and there this past week. It’s a short game as I’ve already gone through it once, so I figured I might as well write up a review for it since I’ve experienced enough of the game to give an opinion on it. For the curious, here is my quick summary:

Good:
- Co-op play revolving around the management of aggro
- Interesting multiplayer different from typical FPS games
- Plethora of guns and gun customization

Bad:
- Unnecessary co-op gimmicks that don’t add much value
- Short 5 hour campaign
- Poor online infrastructure and 2v2 max multiplayer

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