A Mastery of FPS Co-op Campaigning

Army of Two happens to be one of the better two player First-Person Shooter games I have ever played in campaign mode (not even going to compare it to Halo or Counter-Strike multiplayer games). For this post’s purpose we are sticking to storyline mode only.

Why is this one of the best? Because it makes the game fun by inserting little humor points. An example would be allowing you to go up to your teammate and hit a button to show happiness or aggression. Hit the happiness button and your player my give your teammate a fist bump, jam out on an air guitar or slap hands while saying random phrases like, “I got your back bro” or mouthing random musical noises to go with the ‘guitar’ both characters are playing. Hit the aggression button and your player may smack your teammate on the back of the head, punch him in the gut, etc. while saying random things like, “You’re a F#%@ing dead man!” or “What’s your problem!?”

Even during cut scenes your characters are adding humor to the game. Example: progressing through a mission, both teammates are needed to open certain doors. As one holds the door the other moves through it and in one cut scene, the guy holding the door trips his teammate as he passes through. No dialogue, just watching one player trip the other to the ground adds some random in game humor. Maybe even more-so because the cut-scene makes it look dramatic as if you are about to be ambushed or something. During cut-scenes it is regular for you and your teammate to be arguing, adding another level to the character of the game.

Okay, so you guys are marines at the next level of combat serving for a secret agency within the secret service carrying out missions with no connection to the US. If you die, you aren’t Americans, you are just rogue ops that are carrying out your own agenda. The basis of the game is that your boss is trying to get a bill passed for ‘stealth’ missions to be the new wave of war. No public war announcements, just behind the scenes mayhem to accomplish strategic goals.

You get to buy new weapons after or mid-mission with the money you earn for completing missions. This is a pretty cool feature as you can ‘pimp’ your gun. If appearance doesn’t matter to you, you may not find this as interesting, but still, I think it is worth mentioning as it adds another level to the game.

Cool features include an overkill mode where everything is in slow motion as you blast your enemies and back to back mode in which the same thing happens. Best part, if you shoot a guy in the knee, it flies behind him as gravity brings his upper body down. If you hit him more than once (knee then face) his body reacts as physics say it should. Definitely a high point of the game. You can also go into dual snipe mode to take out two guards by shooting at the same time making it so that the rest of the enemy isn’t alerted to your presence.

So, I got a little bit ahead of myself. The overkill mode I was talking about is pretty sweet, but in order to get to that point you have to acquire a certain level of ‘agro’. This agro is basically the attention of the enemy. If one teammate shoots or sprays cover fire, he gets the enemy’s attention. If he does it long enough, he gets the attention of all of the enemies in the scene and the other player becomes almost transparent. He can stand up in plain sight and not get shot at or just run out into the open and start killing people without getting shot at for a good amount of time – 5 seconds is longer than you think sometimes. If you acquire all the agro, it prompts you to go into overkill mode where your partner is still transparent to the enemy and you can take people out in slow motion while taking minimal damage. A definite highlight of the game.

Overall, the game was pretty sweet, and fun to play with Pfieffer for the 8 hours it took us to pass the game on the lowest difficulty rating. What? We went for fun in this game, not difficulty. If difficult is fun for you, up the difficulty level and I’m sure you’ll have a good time.

-Focko

Game.....or movie?

Being a huge fan of the Metal Gear Solid series, I could not wait to play this game. I started out really liking the game, the graphics were amazing, but somehow through rapid aging, Solid Snake is REALLY OLD! He talks really crackly, moves somewhat slow, and if you stay crouched too long, he starts to moan and pat his own back because it hurts, only thing that's missing is a bottle of Viagra.

The game does start out really fun and really feels like the old Metal Gear games with having to stay hidden and being stealthy. Where the game lost me, is as the storyline progresses, you play less and less. I'm all about the cutscenes, but keep them short or far apart, or just let me play right after them!!

I started playing one night, and in about 2 hours of "playing", I only spent an actual 15-20min of ACTUAL GAMEPLAY. There were soooo many times during the cinematic scenes that I was actually yelling at the TV "I just want to play! Just let me play!". I even started telling friends about how long you actually don't play the game, so they would come over, and sure enough watch this "game" with me for a better part of an hour (again, about 10min of gameplay). I'm not sure if it's just because I'm so good at the game that I just flew past the interactive parts of the movie, I mean, game. As much as I'd like to toot my own horn, I don't think this is the case.

Another pet peave I had with the game, is that everything is dramatic and they overkill on making a point. First I'm going to start off by explaining what I mean when I say everything is dramatic. Whenever there is something new in the game, it always starts off by everyone looking at the camera (so you can't see what it is), and shows ever angle possible, then does a very slow shot of who/what it actually is. Half the time it's nothing special. For example, there is a character that has worn a ski mask the whole game, then towards the end of the game, there is this big cinematic scene because he actually took off his mask, and kept showing everyones face as they looked at him, then music got louder and they showed his face and he look like a NORMAL PERSON, nothing special! The other part that made the cinematic scenes so long, is over emphasizing points. There is a part where the enemy is on a boat, and gets surrounded by the army on boats, over the bridges, and by helcopters. It probably shows the different people setting up and pointing there guns for about 12 minutes.......we get it already!! there are A LOT of people setting up to trap them! I don't need to see soldiers taking out their guns, loading them and pointing them for that long.....OVERKILL.

The game's storyline does get very confusing (have no idea how you would follow along if you haven't played the previous games), and it does go on and on and on, even the ending credits are interrupted for another 20min of storyline (don't worry, no actualy gameplaying). Then at the end of the credits, there is some audio to keep the storyline going even further, it reminds me of the cow in the movie: Me, Myself, and Irene that just wouldn't die! End the game already!

As much as I have complained about this game, the times you actually play the game, it is really fun. Also being a fan of the franchise, I had no choice but to play it all the way through just to see what happens. However, I couldn't have been happier when it was all over. If you are a fan of the series, I suggest playing it because they have more plot turns than any game in history (gets kind of ridiculous), if this is your first time playing a Metal Gear Solid game, you will like the gameplay, but be confused as hell at the plot.

-Pfieffer

Arcade Games Brought Home

That is what it feels like to play Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles on the Wii. Pointing the Wii remote at the screen (or sensor) and seeing your cross-hairs move when you move. Point and shoot.

You have zombies, dogs, apes and even leeches attacking you in the latest released version of this game. But with the Wii, you have the arcade feel of not being able to control where you move to next, ala Area 51. There’s no ducking behind boxes, retracing your steps or taking your time to solve various problems within the game – unless the game is programmed to have you duck or retrace your steps. Leeches fly at you and ‘stick to the screen’ so to speak. If a zombie gets in your face and bites you, blood stains the screen for a second. You pick up ammo, herbs and weapons by putting your cross-hairs on the item and pressing ‘A’. If you like the arcade style game play, this game is for you.

Aside from the different play style than all the other Resident Evil games, this game does provide more detail than I have seen in other versions, example Resident Evil 4. You can shoot out the lights anywhere in the game and it affects the lighting in the room, not just the color where the light was on the wall, ceiling or chandelier. And if you shoot the chandelier, it begins swinging and turning as it would in real life if hit from that angle and swings about as long as you think one would in real life, as well. The graphics in this game are nothing to sneeze at either. Everything remains as life-like as any other cutting-edge video game that is out there.

Personally, I got tired of this game very quickly and didn’t leave it on long enough to see if it had a co-operative story mode. I finished the first level consisting of three sublevels and had a cramp in my hand from the way the game makes you hold the remote and continuously ‘pull the trigger,’ or press the ‘B’ button. Good luck playing for an hour and not experiencing the same thing yourself.

I’m a huge fan of the Resident Evil games, but this one isn’t the same. I guess I’ll just have to wait for Resident Evil 5 to come out and play it on Pfieffer’s PS3.

- Focko