The story of Army of Two takes place across 16 years, centering on Elliott Salem and Tyson Rios, two battle-hardened former Army Rangers that join the private sector as mercenaries for hire. Following their former commander Dalton to Security and Strategy Corporation, or SSC, Salem and Rios are dispatched across the globe to “take care of problems” in war zones while raking in large sums of cash. However, as time goes by, both Salem and Rios start to notice that a number of leaks and secrets seem to coincide with their missions as well as a Bill in Congress to fully privatize the military. Trying to get their heads around what’s going on, Salem and Rios fight their way through battlefields in a tale of betrayal, conspiracy and revenge. Army of Two has great visuals and excellent graphics with tons to do. The gameplay is great, with precision controls and the works. The only issue comes up with sensitivity, which can be fixed quite easily. As for the two player co-op, it’s definitely a challenge but manages to pull off a great blend of co-op tactics. Upgrading your weapons is a cool feature, but not being able to pick up enemy weapons plainly put: sucks.

In many ways, Army of Two feels like the love child of Gears of War and Splinter Cell — which by most accounts is a beautiful baby. Although the back-to-back and ledge-hopping opportunities are limited, the core of Army of Two’s linear levels lies in working with your partner to make effective use of the “Aggro Meter.” As one of the game’s two players fires in an enemy’s direction, that player earns more Aggro because he’s “aggravating” the enemy. Keep firing in the enemy’s direction — or better yet, at a few enemies — and the Aggro Meter fills further, eventually making that player draw so much attention that the other player turns invisible.

This invisibility feature, while it sounds cheap and weird, makes total sense. After all, if somebody’s shooting at me with a chaingun, you’d better believe I’m going to pay serious attention to that guy and ignore anyone not directly threatening my life. As a result, balancing Aggro and stealth is really what Army of Two is all about.

While one player sits behind cover and lays aggravating suppressing fire, the other player can flank the enemy and either perform a stealthy kill or blast them to pieces before they even know what hit them. “What if the game had a better online with a death match style?” one may ask. Quite simply, team objective does not cut it this gen. Hold off the flametorches, I’m not finished. Yeah the co-op is definitely fun, but the game will get boring and will have no replay value eventually (apprx 2-3 months). So, everything accounted for begs the thought: What if EA cared about their consumers enough so that they added these features to begin with? Could we expect DLC on Army of Two? We can all only hope.