On story
Army of two: the 40th Day is the sequel to the 2008 EA Games title Army of Two. You begin the game by being reintroduced to Rios and Salem, the characters from the first game. They are doing what they did before, and nothing has really changed. About thirty minutes in you are fighting bad guys on a regular mission. As the first mission ends you begin to experience what the game is all about. Shanghai comes under seige by an unknown force. The destruction is citywide. Buildings are destroyed, and fire reigns down everywhere. The main characters, Rios and Salem, are left high and dry as they attempt to get out of Shanghai alive. The story revolves around their journey through the occupied Shanghai. You are presented with morality choices this time, which seem a little tacked on. I played through the first time as a good guy, and all I got to show for it was twenty gamer points. The ending of the game was a disappointment, because you never learned the true motive behind the attack on Shanghai. Everything mounting up to that point hinted that there might be an awesome boss fight near the end as there was in the previous one. Overall there really wasn't much of a storyline. It was just a series of events in the form of firefights that blundered along to a finale that seemed a stretch. For this, I rate the story a 3/5.
On Game Mechanics
The game mechanics of Army of Two: The 40th Day were similar to the previous game, but there were some major improvements. The first being that the AI was by far more intelligent. This game was developed to be played cooperatively, but I am kind of a lone wolf. In this case, I died more than the AI character did, which is normally not the case on games like this. In the previous title it was a chore to keep your computer buddy alive. I'm glad they changed this. The second part of the game that seemed to be an improvement dealt with weapon customization. The customization feature was streamlined to your HUD as opposed to the previous title which made you go to the main menu to change add-ons to your weapons. This game was also just downright fun to play when it came to smoking baddies. The enemies on regular were challenging, and the sheer number of enemies kept you on your toes. During my first play through I killed over 1200 people. That figure comes from the new stat tracker implemented into the game. The feature that is the biggest pain in the ass comes into play when you have to save hostages. You had to use a secondary HUD system that was rarely useful for anything else. The fact that it was just in the game only for the purpose of saving hostages was a waste. As I stated earlier, the morality system in this game is also a bit aggravating. You constantly get punished for doing the right thing. This more so when you get to the end of the game. I don't really like it when morality comes into play in video games because it is almost like they are punishing you for doing wrong by not giving you as good of options because of that choice. This is not realistic of the real world. Bad people normally get what they want. Overall, this game was an improvement over the previous title. They fixed some flaws of the first game, and tried to implement new features. The new features may not have been successful, but they were steps in the right direction. I give this a portion of the game a 4/5.
Game Average
Since this is my first game review, I will break down how I grade a game. To some it may be obvious. I take the combined score from both sections and add them up. For instance, if a game makes a 2 on story and a 3 on game mechanics it will make a 5/10.
Army of Two: The 40th Day receives a 7/10 because it was entertaining enough to keep me with it until the end. It also delivered some pretty fun shoot em up moments. Regardless, it was not a perfect game. The morality choices seemed to hurt you whichever way you went, and didn't really feel like part of the story. The ending also left much to be desired.
