Army of Two: The 40th Day is a game that exceeded my expectations, providing a non-stop explosive and adrenaline-filled ride from start to finish. It’s a title that has rolled up a satisfying shooting experience with outstanding environments to deliver a very entertaining gaming experience.

This was my first introduction to bad boys Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem, mercenaries who pull off dangerous assignments for their own private military corporation, TransWorld Operations (TWO). Although Salem immediately comes across as more of a handsome devil than Rios whose face is notably scarred, it’s definitely a case of ‘bros before hoes’ with them. This army of two is first and foremost hardcore, but still with a dash of humour and sarcasm (most notably provided by Salem who is voiced by the wonderfully talented Nolan North of Uncharted fame) thrown in every now and again to shake things up a bit.

Although the story is a little more unbelievable than your average videogame, it provides a backdrop of explosive action and sets up some incredible stages so it can be forgiven for its over-the-top construction. Shanghai is under attack by a large army of mercenaries who will stop at nothing to bring the city to its knees. Salem and Rios must fight to survive the ensuing chaos and discover exactly who is behind the daring attacks.

The mercenaries are taking hostages as they wreak havoc in the city streets, and it’s up to you to decide how involved you will get. Will you just try and escape with your lives, or will you fight to help save innocents as you progress? It’s these morality checks that really bring a unique taste to the game, for example early on you will have to decide whether to follow your orders and assassinate your contact in Shanghai or let him live. Choose carefully because every decision you make affects the gameplay and the direction of the storyline, it also directly impacts on how the city folks, and your partner, view you.

A short comic cut scene follows each choice you make, showing how the results of your decision pan out. These animated cut scenes are well crafted and more often than not show a gruesome ending to the tale of the person you crossed paths with, giving you even more reason to choose your next course of action more carefully.

In addition to these morality checks, there are a number of other unique aspects to the game that really helped to set the title apart. For starters if you are engaged in a massive gun battle and are taking heavy fire, it’s possible to feign death. At this point either Salem or Rios (depending on who you are playing as) will drop to the floor and enemies will pass over him, believing he is no longer a threat. However, once your health has regenerated, simply get up and unleash hell on the unsuspecting troops that surround you. Very handy when you are in a tight situation and your partner has strayed too far away to lend a helping hand. You can also mock-surrender in a battle, giving your partner the opportunity to flank or snipe the distracted enemy, or mock-surrender co-operatively before taking them by surprise in bullet time. Co-op sniping enables you to take out certain enemies together, adding to the team play element of the game.

Before you go into a hostage situation the camera will take you into the room with it, showing you very briefly where the enemies and hostages are situated, a very useful tool to help you overcome challenging circumstances. Of course you will not only be facing swarms of mercenaries along the way, but you will also go up against larger, more heavily armoured enemies wielding more lethal weapons such as flamethrowers and Gatling guns, making sure you always have to adapt your strategy and work as a team. You will also be sent into a number of really demanding scenarios where you will have to face wave after wave of enemies, darting out to stock up on ammo while keeping your head down from RPG wielding foes and snipers on the rooftops. You will even be forced to fight back to back when the enemy surrounds you.

If you take too many hits you will go down and your partner has a limited time to save you before you bleed out. In this situation you can do one of three things: call for your partner’s help, sit back and hope he makes it in time; crawl closer to your partner so he can give you the revival juice; or allow your partner to drag you behind cover where he can stitch you up with fewer bullets whizzing past your heads. The sprint function comes in real handy when you need to cover ground fast to save your partner. Of course you can still shoot at enemies when you are down so back your bro up with some fire power.

You can also choose to take out enemies in different ways. Obviously there’s the shoot first and ask questions later strategy which most will prefer, and Rios and Salem are packing enough heat to make this enjoyable. However, some situations call for a more tactical approach. For instance, if you are facing a hostage situation you may not want to run in guns blazing because their grey matter may end up splashed over the surrounding walls. Rather take a few seconds to strategise with your partner (not too long though or else they will be executed despite your best intentions), tagging them before taking out the enemies with your sniper rifle. Just make sure that when you shoot an enemy he stays down, if he is only injured he can still take pot shots at you or kill a hostage.

You could also sneak into the room and take the officer in charge hostage, immediately causing his team to surrender. Of course taking an enemy pleb hostage might backfire so make sure you target the correct officer. At certain stages you can also loot the enemies’ weapons stash but in order to do so effectively you must storm their defense and eliminate all of them before they can lock it away from your prying fingers. Even now you are faced with a choice, to kill the enemy or to tie them up, to save the hostages or to kill them. Again this will affect your morality so choose wisely and be prepared to live with the consequences.

You are armed with three weapons, your primary (machine gun, SMG or shotgun), secondary (back-up pieces including pistols) and special (sniper rifle or missile launcher), as well as grenades. You can also pick up any weapon that your enemy drops, meaning that you have a small arsenal at your disposal. Along the way it’s important to collect money from downed enemies. Once you have tallied up your fortune you can use it to customize your weapons, anything from changing the barrel to adding a silencer or scope. You can even pimp your gun’s style by adding different camo colours to the mix.

The stages are nothing short of impressive, apart from the different set-ups making the battles both challenging and interesting, the environments are pretty unique too. I have never had to carefully make my way down a collapsed building, picking off enemies that are climbing towards me and avoiding crashing helicopters while watching skyscrapers tumble into one another, the city burning and collapsing around me. Nor have I ever ventured into a zoo, teaming not only with wild creatures but mercenaries too, and adventuring through the halls of a hospital where the ceilings are caving in and a small boy could be my only way out.

Obviously when you are facing so many enemies you are going to need a decent cover system and there are no complaints about this one. Simply run up against a wall or behind fallen debris and your man will take cover, or flip a hospital gurney and duck behind it to avoid those low flying bullets. You can blind fire from behind cover to show them you still mean business, and even swop your perspective from cover to aim more precisely. You can also use the aggro meter to your advantage here – when one partner is firing continuously, his aggro meter fills and he draws the enemies’ attention. As a result the enemies ignore the other partner and, although enemies can still see the second partner, it sure helps to try flank them when someone else is drawing their fire.

You can choose to play the campaign mode solo or split-screen co-op, like I did. Given the Army of Two title, it’s obviously much more entertaining to play it with a friend. However, single player mode allows you to instruct your partner and thus co-ordinate your tactics, with the AI being relatively easy to control. So once you’ve saved what’s left of Shanghai in the campaign mode, you will be better prepared to venture out into the big bad online world. You can choose between co-op deathmatch, where you just need to take each other out, control, where you need to hold key points, or warzone, where you are faced with different objectives. You’ll need an EA account to get in on the action but it is easy to set up through the game if you don’t already have one. With up to ten players competing, it is decent fun with solid weapons and nicely put together maps. A new multiplayer mode called Extraction will also be available next month, unless you pre-ordered the game.

The variety in the gameplay, impressive environments, adequate shooter and cover systems and interesting co-op elements make Army of Two: The 40th Day well worth taking a closer look at. The morality choices, various difficulty levels and multiplayer options add to the replayability factor of the game, making it a solid purchase. However, it is these same morality choices that also hinder the game somewhat, more often than not leaving you more than a little confused.

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