In fact, the game actually feels really fun whenever Salem and Rios aren’t just ducking out from pillars and raining hot lead down on anyone unlucky enough to be on the other end of things. It’s actually a lot of fun, and the moments when you and your partner are separated but still working as a team are where the game truly shines – which is why it’s a shame that most of the fighting has the two of you fairly close together in narrow, linear-feeling hallways. In this way, one half of the duo can hold the bad guys’ attention while the other snipes or moves around to flank and pick them off. It’s here that the teamwork between Rios and Salem becomes actually relevant to the gameplay (because let’s face it, requiring two people to press “A” to open a door isn’t that much different than just requiring one person to do the same).Įvery action Salem and Rios take either builds or reduces “aggro,” represented by a meter at the top of your HUD, and whoever has aggro is the one who the enemies will (usually) concentrate their fire on. The gunplay is heavily based around firing from cover at enemies with health that regenerates over time if you stay out of the action, and it doesn’t really change things up all that much. One cramped Shanghai alleyway blends with the next, after all. The entire game essentially takes place in Shanghai, and while the level designers clearly took pains to vary the scenery – a zoo, a mall, a hospital – it does start to feel a bit similar after a while. Having never played the original Army of Two, there was really no framework for me to compare the first game to its sequel, though from what I understand the first game had marginally more varied environments.
![army of two review army of two review](https://oimg.videogamer.com/images/c548/army_of_two_35.jpg)
That’s pretty much all you’re going to get. There are some guys, and they’ve invaded Shanghai for some reason, wreaking destruction in one of the world’s largest cities on a frankly ludicrous scale, and Rios and Salem (who are ostensibly just good buddies and not lovers) really don’t want to be in Shanghai anymore and want to get the hell out. 40th Day is a competent third-person shooter that feels incredibly generic and run-of-the-mill with a plot that feels thinner than the air atop Mount Everest.