Army of Two: The 40th Day

It has some issues that at this point in a generation are pretty much unforgivable, but if you are willing to look past them, you’ll find there’s a decent cooperative shooter there.

Army of Two: The 40th Day is a wild mix of brilliant thoughts, violent firefights, stolen ideas, and lazy design.

A solid, entertaining third-person shooter, best played with a friend, but it's not quite the big advancement over the original it could have been. It's a more cohesive game, thanks to its location and more believable main characters, but the AI still disappoints at times and the new morality system misses far more than it hits. It's also incredibly short, and without a top-tier multiplayer component to turn to, your fun will likely be over very quickly.

This new part in the franchise is a fine one. You can play the whole game with two players in the co-op mode. Besides of the shooting fun, the game still has a few problems. The graphics aren’t really good, the story doesn’t really mean anything and the game is too short. Army of Two: The 40th Day is a fun game, but it’s got to many technical difficulties.

Although the Agro system underpins the overall co-op gameplay sufficiently, the lack of imagination prevents the game from pushing forwards the co-op experience. Instead there's more satisfaction gained by the subtlety that EA Montreal has brought to the series; something we never imagined ourselves to say about the antics of Rios and Salem.

A good, but entirely forgettable experience. It's worth a quick play if you've got nothing else to do, and a weekend rental would serve you very well. However, it's definitely not something you'll want to keep on your gaming shelf for very long.

The new morality system isn't as effective as we had hoped. There are times when you'll make a choice, such as killing a precious white tiger or calling upon a young boy to help you in a firefight. No matter what your decision, they usually end up costing you.

Army of Two: The 40th Day doesn’t hide that it's all about the cooperative game mode. But for a purely cooperative game, it is quite low on content. The other game modes might be decent, but have been done better by other games many times before. Army of Two: The 40th Day could have been the ultimate cooperative game, but failed because it wanted to be everything else as well.

The real saving grace though for The 40th day is the multiplayer options.

Although Rios and Salem are a couple of weight, it’s lacking something here, especially if you want to feel the characters. But in short, it’s an entertaining game and, above all, solid in its execution.

If you enjoyed the no nonsense co-op shooter action of the original game than Army of Two: The 40th Day with its enhancements and extra polish maybe a worthwhile addition to your games collection.

The 40th Day is just far too inexcusably frustrating to heartily recommend, but if what you're looking for is a hefty serving of disposable, bombastic fare, then this will be right up your street.

Army of Two: The 40th Day has improved, although it feels a little rushed as a number of glitches become unavoidable. The design also feels a little lazy with little all around variation.

If there was more variety, action and character to the game overall this would be excellent. [Feb 2010, p.108]

It's still dumb but a lot tighter and more fun than the original. Just make sure you play it in co-op, okay? [Mar 2010, p.74]

To quote some great song titles when suggesting Army of Two: The 40th Day, all I can say is that "One is the loneliest number", and "It's takes two, baby."

The game itself is mostly forgettable, but the fluttery feeling you’ll get when the two of you bump virtual chests isn’t.

With so many great co-op experiences available to gamers, it’s tough to recommend The 40th Day. Lacking a cohesive story, solid controls, key multiplayer features, and polish, this sequel fails to close the gap of mediocrity running through its core game design.

A charmless third-person shooter with more gimmicks than sense. [Issue#188, p.72]

Take away the armored masks and you'd have a hard time telling Army of Two: The 40th Day from a glut of other third-person shooters. It's not bad enough to be especially memorable, and it's not good enough that people will talk about it for very long.

It's a technically competent shooter with co-operative play. For some, that's plenty. But if you're more discerning about your shooters, you'll probably get bored of this one before you've seen the end credits.

The potential is there for a third game to capitalise on the series’ positive features, but until that day, the 40th Day stands as a perfectly competent but ultimately disposable title.

When you take all of the flaws and advancements with the game, The 40th Day really just balances out to be equal to if not slightly behind where the first one started.

Although it was mostly a bore, the combat was ‘stupid’ enough for two players to take pleasure from watching the train-wreck.

To play The 40th Day in single player exposes a multitude of flaws the core game has, with AI mistakes particularly running rampant throughout. Co-op does a lot to mask these annoyances, but it is still not enough to push the game into the realm of a ‘must buy.’

Ultimately, with so many games around at this time brimming with originality and quality, it is easy to overlook this game and the experience left me feeling a little hollow. But if you have time, then pop this in your rental queue and you might be pleasantly surprised.

It’s just a shame that the solid fundamentals laid out by the original Army of Two couldn’t be built on in this sequel.