The demo begins from the perspective of a tourist’s video camera in Shanghai, which acts as a sort of intro reel, as well as an convenient way of conveying the city’s utter destruction, as explosions begin tearing apart buildings without mercy. As the video cuts out, we shift back a few hours to Salem and Rios en route to meet with their contact for an upcoming mission.
EA promised that steps would be taken to raise the tone of the narrative a bit, but early evidence suggests that this isn’t the case. It appears that by adding in a few lines of dialogue to make the characters seems a bit more cynical and world weary, we’re expected to be fooled into thinking that we’re being pulled into a nuanced and thought provoking story. Sure it’s just a demo, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say…we’re not. That being said, I can’t even remember the names of anyone other than the protagonists from the original, so I decided to let that slide and let the action do the talking.
After meeting with the contact Salem and Rios get started on the mission, which at first is a simple recon assignment that involves placing beacons at pre-defined points. Of course, that wouldn’t make for a very exciting game and it’s not long before the security detail make an appearance, and it’s through fighting these goons that a lot of the gaming mechanics are introduced.
First up is the return of the ‘aggro’ system, which involves attracting enemy attention by making as much noise as possible to give your partner a bit more freedom to maneuver. It’s a simple concept and one that I like, but it’s implemented and presented in a very transparent manner. Rather than having to judge subtle differences in enemy behaviour as their attention switched between Salem and Rios, the aggrometer at the top of the screen tells you exactly how much they’re focusing on you. Not only that, filling up the aggrometer in your favour results in your character glowing bright red, just in case you didn’t pick up on the fact that everyone is shooting at you. While the whole mechanic is a bit heavy handed and extreme, it still adds a bit of strategy to the average firefight, and can often be responsible for some hilarious moments of badassery. Within moments of the first firefight, as I blindly fired from behind cover to keep the enemy distracted, I could barely contain laughing as I watched Rios sneak around behind one of the enemies, grab him by the scruff of the neck and and royally headbutt him in the dish, only for everyone else to turn around and start blasting away at him.
Making our way up the building, we also came across a few situations that let us put our teamwork skills to the test. Hostage situations and room breaches allowed us to have a quick tactical briefing before entering the fray, and for the most part some of the new co-op moves work pretty well. Walking into a room with your hands up will take enemy attention away from the hostages and gives your partner a few seconds to get the drop on them. You can also take your foes hostage and use them as human shields, which doesn’t work so well in hostage situations (as we found out the hard way) but again diverts a lot of aggro your way as well as giving you a bit of protection from incoming fire.
A common complaint with Army of Two was that the co-op moves were very inflexible and often only executable at strictly predetermined points in the game. This is still true of some location specific moves like boosting your partner over high fences, but other actions appear to have been freed up a bit and co-op tactics are prevalent throughout the core of the game rather than just in bite sized chunks. Co-op sniping can now be performed whenever you want for example, with a little picture in picture representation of your ally’s viewpoint being displayed whenever he aims through a sniper scope. It can be pretty useful looking through your partners eyes every now and then, especially when trying to launch a well timed attack, and it also lets you appreciate some Fallout 3 inspired exploding heads when a successful shot is made.
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