LOS ANGELES — A locker full of weapons. A panicked security guard waving a revolver. We, two armed mercenaries, could shoot him and take the guns. But at what cost?
Army of Two: The 40th Day, coming later this year for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, has its work cut out for it. The original Army of Two videogame force-fed players a lesson on the ills of private military corporations, delivering a middling narrative wrapped in interesting cooperative gaming mechanics. But at an E3 presentation, a room full of journalists were presented with a moral conundrum: Do we take out the guard and snatch the guns? If we don't make a decision quickly, the mercenaries we control will obey the guard and step aside.
I like rationalizing my actions. The gamer in me says take the guns. This is a third-person shooter, after all, and more weapons are always useful. Rios and Salem, the mercenaries I'm controlling, need these weapons to stay alive. And who is this scrawny little security guard to stand in our way?
An attempt to split the difference and disarm the guard goes comically wrong when a stray bullet ricochets. Our pair of heroes steps over the guard's bloodied corpse. We're then treated to a montage: images of a smiling child. The security guard's smiling child, now fatherless.
He was a family man. Yikes.
The gamer in me notes the possible karmic retribution, later on. But my inner role-player shifts uncomfortably. Sure, the entire scene was ham-fisted, but this was a closed E3 presentation, where a room full of journalists voted on a step to take. How will this scene play out on the couch, when you're shouting at your co-op partner to back away from the locker?
The developers of The 40th Day are hoping to exploit this human angle, making gamers more than just marauders. With a revamped playbook of cooperative gameplay mechanics, players are encouraged to approach each scenario strategically.
Consider the traditional hostage situation. When I last saw the game, the developer manning the controls opted to fake a surrender, distracting the enemy while their partner sneaked around and began firing.
This time, the enemy was located on the opposite side of a wooden door. One player climbed up to a high vantage point and proceeded to "tag" all of the enemy soldiers and hostages. Enemy targets now appeared in red, while bystanders appeared green, on both players' screens. The two players then coordinated their attack (counting down from three), firing upon the red targets both from one player's vantage point and right through the door, in the other player's case.
Impatient types always have the option of charging through, guns blazing, but that won't help you save innocents. We were told that hostages will serve as a sort of "currency." It wouldn't surprise me if players who were morally bankrupt couldn't afford the best weapons in 40th Day.
Returning from the first game is the weapons customization system. The brief demonstration I saw had more in common with Lego than Pimp My Rifle. Players will be able to mix and match parts in a fashion that would likely drive true weapons aficionados into fits of rage. Think grenade launchers on AK-47s, soda cans strapped to gun barrels as makeshift silencers and assorted parts slapped together to craft Dr. Frankenstein's own submachine gun.
All these mechanics look nice, but the first Army of Two suffered from being a bit bland. The idea of homicidal guns-for-hire mercenary main characters was interesting, but how exactly do they really differ from every other videogame character when few games force players to make moral choices? We don't yet know if the sequel will fix the original's story problems.
And as it stands, players without a buddy to share the game with should probably steer clear, too. I haven't seen the computer AI in action, but games focused on two-player cooperation rarely if ever work as well with a computer subbing in for a human.
But if you've got a hankerin' for a new cooperative experience, here's a game that's built from the ground up to get friends killing things together. Let's watch this one with guarded optimism.
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