Salem has just walked onto the rooftop of a skyscraper following a firefight when an explosion is heard, and then another, and then another rocks the building in front of him. The entire structure shakes and starts to fall apart from one side, completely disintegrating before him and dropping down to the streets far, far below. When the dust starts to settle we see out onto the city of Shanghai, and further beyond it, the battleships that are pounding the city with missiles. Fighter jets streak right above his head and fly further into the city as buildings fall apart all over, smashing into each other and onto the street below. Chaos, smoke and explosions are everywhere. A missile hits a plane that was dropping bombs and it burst into flames, heading right towards his building and smashing not twenty feet from him, sending chunks of the roof flying all over the place.
And then a group of heavily armed mercenaries bust through the doors behind him, and it’s back to work. Your buddy Rios has been seperated by the explosion so they both dive behind cover to engage the threat while a war take place in the background.
This is Army of Two: The 40th Day, and it’s insane what EA Montreal is doing with the setting this time. You control the same masked duo as before, except this time your assignment takes place entirely in one location. The first game felt a bit disjointed, with you traveling from Africa to the Middle East and even back to Miami, but this time it’s set completely in Shanghai. You’ll spend five days in the city trying to get out of this horrific situation as the entire city is seiged.
EA Montreal invited Chud.com and a group of other select sites to a community day to get a look at
the game in progress, a very early look. We weren’t even allowed a chance to
get our hands on it, which was more than a letdown for us, but they
only had a brief section to show off. They’re not spilling the beans on the story just yet but the obvious thing is that the mercenaries are in China to do a job, and while they’re working a completely unrelated assault on the city takes place by the so-called 40th Day Initiative. They’re keeping mum on just who these people are and what they want, but it’s safe to assume that they’re a group of religious crazies of some sort if they’re using that name.
The scene I mentioned at the beginning is the first indication of an attack. You aren’t there to combat an invasion- Rios and Salem aren’t heroes and don’t want to fight a war. They want to do their job and get the hell out of there. They don’t know what’s going on and they don’t care, they just want to survive to fight another day.
Producer Matt Turner took us through a few different sections of the game and showed off just how improved the sequel looks. It’s immediately obvious that this isn’t a quick cash-in, as they’ve taken a lot of complaints about the first game and worked on the ones they though needed working on, all while completely overhauling the graphics and sound.
The first Army of Two gained attention because it was a game conceived completely as a co-op experience. But there were a few issues with the partner AI, issues that have been worked on to make it feel like he’s in there on the battle with you instead of just a sidekick. There also were also very few sections were you got to work with your partner and plan out an attack. Not so in this game! No longer will you be limited to just a moment or two where you can both coordinate sniper attacks and such, now there are a ton of places where you can choose how best to handle the situation. We were shown two different options during one section.
In it, Rios and Salem come to a room (with a door! A first for the series) and see through the open window that there are three enemy mercs about to kill a group of civilians. Choosing to play it as an insane shooter, Matt kicked open the door and started gunning down the mercs, leading to the hostages behind shot down as well. Sad, but it got the job done.
The second time through he popped up the brand new GPS system. Completely revamped, the GPS now allows you to tag enemies and friendlies for your partner. When playing with the computer you can hold your cursor over an enemy and bring up a list of commands, telling him for example to snipe or take the enemy hostage. Matt slowly opened the door this time, sneaking up on a merc who had his back turned. He grabbed him and with a button yelled at the merc’s friends to drop their weapons. After a tense second they complied, and Matt instructed his partner via the GPS to tie each of them up. The guy he was holding would struggle every once in a while, but a pistol butt to the side of head kept him in line. After the other two were tied up Matt knocked the guy he was holding out and went to free the prisoners… only to shoot them in the backs as they ran off, and then shoot the helpless enemies on the floor. Gotta love it.
That’s just some of the new features in the game. As you can tell, rather than have specific co-op events in spots you have many more opportunities to work as a group. Although the usual step-jumps, shield, and back to back moments will still be there, you’ll need to rely on your partner much more this time, especially since you can now be split up.
The core gameplay has been kept the same, but improved. There’s just so many more options available to you this time. We were also shown a section where a group of mercs came running up on you guys, screaming to know who you are. You can choose to just engage them, or you can throw your hands up and mock-surrender, while instructing your partner to shoot at one of them. You can aim and quick-draw on one guy while your buddy takes on another, and then dive to cover to take on the rest.
Another co-op move is shown at another hostage situation, one where you’re seperated yet again. If one guy doesn’t have a line of sight, the other player can tag the enemies and civilians via the GPS and let his friend help engage them. Oh yeah, and now you can shoot through materials like wood.
Expect the usual assortment of weapons and at least the same upgrade capabilities from the first game. They’re not talking about how the upgrades work, just yet… but the missions are different as well. Now during a break in the mission you may be contacted by someone with a job offer, and you can set a price for the job. It’s a neat touch to make you feel like an active participant (instead of just being handed assignments) but if you set it too high they’ll balk at it. Matt demonstrated this by putting the price to kill a target at 20 grand- the guy balked at it so he lowered the price to nothing! The client mentioned something about you being a bunch of sick bastards and thanked you for doing it. Doing a job for free would make for a funny achievement, if they so chose…
Head to Page 2 for more gameplay impressions, and a hint at things to come…