Army Of Two

Rented (will be buying tomorrow), and on the 360 mate, my feelings about the PS3 are the polar opposites to yours at the moment. If it wasn't for Rock Band it would have been the worst purchase I've ever made in my life - so it's a good job that Rock Band is the best purchase I've ever made in my life!

It's offline co-op I've been playing, but I'm reliably informed by the nephew that online co-op is exactly the same.

It really is a great little game though, I wouldn't pay full RRP because I would only buy it for the co-op, but last night the missus and I played it for hours. It's so satisfying, earning money and upgrading your weapons to make it easier for yourself.

The AGGRO system is great as well - there's a bar that swings from you to the other person in the middle of the screen. If one of you is doing all of the shooting, you get all of the AGGRO, and so everybody is trying to gun you down - leaving the other person virtually invisible to sneak up behind them and kill them, or achieve a mission objective. I'd call it tactical, but it's dumbed-down tactical, seeing as that's the only tactic. ;)
 
Hmmm, cool! Gonna try and get this asap :)

Jack Bauer said:
Rented (will be buying tomorrow), and on the 360 mate, my feelings about the PS3 are the polar opposites to yours at the moment. If it wasn't for Rock Band it would have been the worst purchase I've ever made in my life - so it's a good job that Rock Band is the best purchase I've ever made in my life!

It's offline co-op I've been playing, but I'm reliably informed by the nephew that online co-op is exactly the same.

It really is a great little game though, I wouldn't pay full RRP because I would only buy it for the co-op, but last night the missus and I played it for hours. It's so satisfying, earning money and upgrading your weapons to make it easier for yourself.

The AGGRO system is great as well - there's a bar that swings from you to the other person in the middle of the screen. If one of you is doing all of the shooting, you get all of the AGGRO, and so everybody is trying to gun you down - leaving the other person virtually invisible to sneak up behind them and kill them, or achieve a mission objective. I'd call it tactical, but it's dumbed-down tactical, seeing as that's the only tactic. ;)
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Cheers for the review Jack. I'll pick this up sometime when it's cheap. My mate and I are having a laugh playing local co-op on GoW so AoT should just be more of the same I hope :)
 
That's exactly it mate.

On your own it uses AI for your teammate and you know how frustrating that can be, and online looks good but infested with nerds (spawn die spawn die spawn die). But with a mate in co-op it is great fun, and it's very hard as well I find (even on the easiest difficulty!).

Two other good features I've just remembered:

The enemies have ranks displayed above their head, so you know how hard they are to kill straight away. The easier ones are 2-3 shots with a good gun, the harder ones are a lot more (5-7 or more depending on how good their cover is), and the extreme ones can only be killed by one person distracting them and the other sneaking up behind them.

The progression doesn't get frustrating because if you get stuck, you press the GPS button and your view is changed to a tactical one (the same kind of view you can see in GRAW on the maps, so there's another game that's been ripped off). If you look at the ground you can see lines of orange arrows that lead you to various waypoints - so you're never looking for a way to get out of the level for ten minutes. Handy.
 
Electronic Arts has said the multiplayer region-locking in Army of Two isn't an indicator of what we can expect from future titles.

It emerged earlier this week that US and European gamers are unable to play each other online in AOT. According to the game's manual, "The online game modes in Army of Two are not cross region compatible and is only supported between PAL discs."

This morning an EA spokesperson told Eurogamer, "I have been advised that this decision was taken by the development team for reasons specific to the AOT gameplay, rather than being an indicator for future games.

"Basically, the reason for this approach is linked to the P2P networking approach used in Army Of Two, the desire to reduce the risk of any lag in the animation of the game and cut the chance of a Versus game being bogged down by lag caused by region," the spokesperson continued.

"Region locking has also been used as some local versions of the game are missing elements due to territory restrictions."

Not technical enough for you? How about this statement from Army of Two producer Reid Schneider: "Army of Two uses a deterministic (peer to peer) approach for networking vs. a traditional client/server approach. We do this so we can have all the synchronised animation gameplays that exist in the game." Right.

"This solution is solid for our game but also exposes us to risk in terms of lag, if we're not careful. In a peer to peer connection the person with the worst connection brings down the whole group to his/her worst connection level."

Do go on. "While this isn't generally a problem for co-op (since most people play co-op with friends), when playing in Versus mode 3, people can be highly adversely affected by one player with a bad connection. We use the region lock to minimise the likelihood of this occurring."

Fair enough. Now what about this whole territory restrictions thing? "Another reason we have region lock is that there are certain considerations on a territory basis which we need to manage. For example, in the Asian version players cannot shoot bodies due to territory requirements. We did not want to take this feature away from North American or European users." Too right. Bad luck, Asian territories.

"With a deterministic (peer to peer) approach the game simulation must have exact parity on both systems. Thus you can't have a game where you are able to shoot bodies in one and not in the other. If you did, it would result in a de-sync in the simulation and ultimately the game would fail." And the paradox would rip a hole in the space-time continuum and the universe would collapse in on itself.

Army of Two is out now on PS3 and Xbox 360, and you'll find a review along with lots of pictures and videos over on the gamepage. Try not to cross the streams.

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Some interesting and valid points. The point about shooting bodies in Asia was interesting. Is this true Placebo? Do other companies have to adapt games for this?
 
DagsJT said:
Pretty decent price there, Paul.
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Yea cheers - delivered as well. Chuffed :)

Prob would have liked it on 360 really so I could co-op with some of you guys, but I'm struggling to get onto the consoles at the best of times at the mo, so doesnt really matter!
 
Apparantly it doesn't have system link? Just split-screen and XBL?
 
DagsJT said:
Apparantly it doesn't have system link? Just split-screen and XBL?
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No system link option that I can see. Very few people do that anyway?

Milanista said:
How much gameplay time do you reckon this game has with coop? Only coop really interests me.
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I've been on it for five hours with the missus and apparently we're on the middle level now, so ten hours max I think (we go through games really slowly, like to find all the hidden bits etc.) - but it's worth playing through again on a harder level. Easy is quite hard, and you don't get the level-completion achievements for it!
 
Rented this and the club as i wait for rockband which is in customs right now

I've only played with the ai partner so far and its pretty average --- im having fun, but it seems i just cant get my partner to follow my instructions

ill tell him to advance while i have agro and he'll just run around shooting everything the moment he sees it taking the agro and ballsing up his chance at flanking

or ill tell him to come to me to heal me and the nob wil grab me for a split second and then shoot at the ai for a split, then me then shoot them me then shoot then ill die

OR even worse once he grabs me he then drags me across half of the map to heal me!

The misses has said she'll have a game later so that should help A LOT.

I love the idea of earning money and upgradings guns - can you replay levels for more money?

I've got it for a week so i should get everything i want out of it by then
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The Club - very basic, very clunky to control, very average - rentable at a push but ... erm.. its a bit crap :TD:

I had read that if you like the club you'd like army of 2 and vice versa - so i grabbed both (rent 1 get 1 free offer) thinking if i finish 1 i have the other

i doubt ill finish the club - just doesn't really appeal to me or make me want to play again --- i hate time trial PERFECT run games anyway so god knows what i was thinking getting this

avoid
 
Radiation said:
Rented this and the club as i wait for rockband which is in customs right now

I've only played with the ai partner so far and its pretty average --- im having fun, but it seems i just cant get my partner to follow my instructions

ill tell him to advance while i have agro and he'll just run around shooting everything the moment he sees it taking the agro and ballsing up his chance at flanking

or ill tell him to come to me to heal me and the nob wil grab me for a split second and then shoot at the ai for a split, then me then shoot them me then shoot then ill die

OR even worse once he grabs me he then drags me across half of the map to heal me!

The misses has said she'll have a game later so that should help A LOT.

I love the idea of earning money and upgradings guns - can you replay levels for more money?

I've got it for a week so i should get everything i want out of it by then
-

The Club - very basic, very clunky to control, very average - rentable at a push but ... erm.. its a bit crap :TD:

I had read that if you like the club you'd like army of 2 and vice versa - so i grabbed both (rent 1 get 1 free offer) thinking if i finish 1 i have the other

i doubt ill finish the club - just doesn't really appeal to me or make me want to play again --- i hate time trial PERFECT run games anyway so god knows what i was thinking getting this

avoid
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Like the sound of this - I LOVE the Club! Cannot believe the pounding it gets... good ole fashion kill for points 3 minute adrenaline rush!?

Getting Army of Two tomorrow, so hope the 'if you like one, you like the other' holds true.
 
Army of Two Demo

Publisher Electronic Arts announced today that a downloadable demo of EA Montreal's recently released co-op action game Army of Two (PS3, X360) will be available via the Xbox 360's online Xbox Live Marketplace on April 1.
Featuring a co-op training session before dropping players into Somalia where they must work together to overthrow a warlord, the demo will be exclusive to the Xbox Live Marketplace.
 
That's nice of them, too late like because everyone's realised now R6V2 is so far superior to this that they threw away their money buying it, but never mind!
 
Ah well, it's not much really so if it lasts a couple of weeks of occasional play, that'll do.

Plus my housemate is going halves so will only cost me £6 :)
 
I remember getting this cheap off the AVForums classifieds for about a fiver. Is wasn't a bad game, but it's a bit dated in terms of gameplay/graphics etc.
 
I completed the game with the IA on contractor difficulty. It was very exhausting :CURSE:.

The first contact with the game was hard because of the controls and the amount of enemies but after 1 hour it was ok.
Each mission lasts 1 hour which is nice too.

The biggest problem is your partner, he CAN'T find the best way to heal you so sometimes I died, but 90% of the time he's doing well and he is useful (not like Sheva on RE5).

Playing with a friend is really good and way better :TU:.

I'm glad there's a sequel.
 
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