Well, last Saturday, I went to GameStop, which is my primary (no, scratch that, only) option for buying video games that are either fun, cheap and inexpensive, or the latest craze that I am so eager to destroy right in front of millions of fans online. (I'm a pessimistic comedian. Unless I like it too, I don't see why people go bollocks-out over it, so I annihilate it.)
I went to buy Heavy Rain (because I really wanted the ancestor to its predecessor, Indigo Prophecy). Unfortunately, oh shite! I don't HAVE a PS3! This is because I prefer to not own every damned gaming console in the world, lest I be officially labeled a mute, Scottish uber-nerd by my, quote-en-quote, "friend", Jack.
So, instead, I had to settle with buying Army of Two.
It... It's not that I don't like Army of Two, per se... I just don't really enjoy playing it. I don't know, Third-Person Shooter games have always had this habit of being absolute trash with me. Like, Gears of War, or Dark Sector.
Well, okay, not Dark Sector.
Why do I hate them so much? Well, I don't want to see my supposedly super-awesome character get gibbed from a stray grenade, to the raucous chorus of "Whoo! The dumb bitch is fucking dead!" from the only-too-eager-to-kill-me enemies. That, and aiming becomes a damned hassle when you're looking over somebody's shoulder and trying to hit a bird shite on a tin can five hundred feet away. Not to mention that your character always seems to have a miserably painful-looking limp in one of his legs when he moves. Just once, I would like to control a soldier who doesn't act like he's running while suffering from a hernia.
I can make an exception for the Splinter Cell series. That game actually uses realistic movement, and there's personally nothing cooler than seeing your character sneak up behind a Spetsnasz soldier, grab him around the throat, and slam his face into the wall so hard that he's dead before the bullet he promptly gets finished off with later. But, here's the thing: Games like those, and Assassin's Creed? They're not TPS games. They're Third Person Stealth games. Maybe not so much Assassin's Creed as Splinter Cell, but I'm not about to make my way through the Action genre when I'm talking about TPS.
Anyhow, what I'm trying to say is, there's not a lot of TPS games that impress or "wow" me. Army of Two is one of the many that don't.
The basic story is about two former U.S. Army Rangers who were fighting a losing war in Somalia, circa 1993 (I believe), who later get hired into a PMC (Private Military Corp, or Private Military Contractors, whichever you prefer), only to find out that their old buddy, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Dalton, has been organizing a conspiracy to make the private sector more powerful than the American military, thereby forcing it out of power for the private sector.
Enter Private First Class Elliot Salem, and his noticeably taller, more muscular, and far better equipped partner, Corporal Tyson Rios, chalk four, U.S. Army Rangers. As if I have any idea what in the bloody hell "chalk four" is supposed to mean. First up is training, with your invisible microphone-whoring friend, Pedro, guiding you along in an obnoxious manner.
I was playing as Tyson Rios, because when I played as Salem on easy mode, I died upwards of one billion times because of his pathetic gear and even worse armor. At least when you get the heavy gear for Tyson, it actually protects him.
So, as the abnormally tall Rios, I jumped over a bar. And crouched under a low opening. And completed the first test: How to make sure you've ever played a video game in your life.
Next up was target practice. Bang bang, target down. Reload. Rinse, lather, repeat, now I've shown that I've played a shooter before.
Next was suppressive fire, drawing aggro, sneaking around, and killing jerks on turrets, thereby proving that I have actually played a shooter, and didn't just stand there wasting ammo because I didn't know where the "Pick Up Your Damn Feet And Bloody Run" buttons were.
Things started to get complicated with the Showing Appreciation/Displeasure commands. By walking up to Salem and pressing A, I initiated a mildly entertaining bout of air-guitaring with assault rifles. Conversely, by pressing the "boom headshot" button, I showed how much I really hated Salem by repeatedly back-handing him across the face, headbutting him, palming the back of his head, punching him in the gut, and again in the face mask, and generally just abusing him for no reason, other than I hated him.
Next, I get to slide into cover. Wooo.
Then I got to toss a grenade, and was mildly reminded of the terrible grenade-aiming physics of Gears of War, only, these were actual grenades, and not Morningstar heads on chains with bombs attached to them. Hilariously, I missed my target, and the grenade bounced back in my face and blew my sorry arse to hell. This made me laugh, and that's hard to come by when I can keep a straight face despite sticking myself with a grenade and having my neck twisted around in impossible positions in Halo. Then again, I have no reason to like Halo, so that could contribute to it.
So next up is how to kill a Heavy. Same idea with the turret guy, but when the turret is actively approaching you, that's another story. Oh, and you have to kill him from behind. No exceptions. Not even a damn rocket launcher. So, I put Salem in suppressive mode, turned invisible (because American soldiers totally turn invisible or red when dealing with aggro), sneaked up behind the guy, and grabbed aggro. For the rest of my life, I will never know how I did that, because Salem had all the aggro, and our guns were the same caliber.
Guess that's what I get for playing a giant instead of a snarky snagglepus of a shitebag soldier. (Achievement Unlocked: "SSSS")
Anyhow, then I learned that I have a GPS. For once. In my life.
And then I shot more targets. Supposedly, at the same time as Salem. (In reality, he was a second off the mark.)
Then I got locked in a cage (Because Pedro sucks), and Salem had to press a button. Sounds easy, right?
WRONG. This is the military, stupid.
I'd go into detail, but there were too many soldiers, and my screen was so red from the damage I was taking that I could hardly see anything.
So, I'll just skip to Back-To-Back sequences.
These are the most enjoyable part of Army of Two, aside from watching your arse go flying from a rogue grenade, or kicking a terrorist so hard in the bollocks that he literally gets lifted off his feet and thrown back a few meters.
Basically, you stand back to back (ha ha ha) with your partner and slow-mo kill anybody and everybody who isn't you. And that's exactly what I did. And boy, did I go about it gracefully. I almost heard a ballet song while dead bodies went flying arse-over-tea-kettle in slow motion.
Finally: I blew up Salem.
XD Not really, I just sent him downrange into an explosive trap which mildly fecked him up. Unfortunately, if I were to actually kill Salem, I would lose, so I had to go and heal him. Easy, right?
WRONG. This is the military, stupid. (Sounds familiar, doesn't it?)
Who would've thought that America was losing the war when we had so many expendable soldiers in the training fields? I must have gone through two hundred of the jerks before they finally allowed me to heal Salem in peace. (Achievement Unlocked: "Suspenseful Bastard")
So, finally, I get to the actual game. And of course, they give me the same terrible guns as I started out with. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the M16 (or, "S-System", as Army of Two calls it), but why must it suck so hard? The damage, when fully upgraded, was less than half that of an AK-47, which could be as weak as a pistol, or as strong as a sniper rifle, with just one of its upgrades. And I don't even like the AK-47. Why are the strongest guns always the ones I hate?
I feel it reasonable to mention that one of the many "assault rifles" available was a portable Vulcan minigun. Yeah, I'm not joking. It cost like, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Anyhow, so I'm in Somalia with my crap rifle and my crap pistol and my crap sniper rifle (Two of the three were able to be un-crapped, though), and my crap partner makes the first biggest fart of a decision when I'm trying to sneak up on a group of Somalians:
He yells at me to blow their heads open.
Let's put two and two together here: When sneaking up on a baddie, why is it a bad idea to yell at your partner? Simple answer: You die.
Thankfully, I didn't die, but that was because they all had really bad guns. I gave Salem a good backhand for that. I don't think he appreciated it, because he headbutt me back. The little prick.
So, after what felt like an hour of being stuck behind the same old destroyed and gutted car as everybody else on the map, I finally meet Phillip Clyde, and I was none too happy about it. After reading the bare basic reviews of the game (movement sucks; characters unrealistic; you know), I found out that Clyde was labeled as one of the biggest shitebags to ever be put in a video game, and I could see why. "Hey, how's it going?" "Get your fucking hand away from my fucking face or I'll fucking kill you." Nice guy, isn't he?
Anyhow, Clyde actually gives me some good pointers, like tearing off the door of an already destroyed and gutted car (thereby gutting it even worse) and using it as a shield against bullets. The bad part is, I move about as fast as a guy carrying a car door in a crouched position should, which was about the equivalent of a snail. On steroids. That, and Salem is my backseat gunner, and he's completely exposed, so while I've got all my fronts covered, his arse is taking bullets for my valentine. (Yes, I went there.) So, as one might imagine, he tends to go down for the count a lot, and in the worst spots.
I tried to go for an achievement that required me to beat up people with my shield, but every time I tried, god damned Salem would steal the kill from me. I finally resorted to headbutting him until he stopped being a bugger. Which was never.
When Idiot Salem and I finally got to where we needed to be (that is, a hotel just up the street), we got thrown in a real-life back-to-back. And we sucked at it, because Salem was stuck on the "retard" setting, and threw grenades.
Yes. Grenades.
My fail-gun just fired backwards because of Salem.
Well, that was all well and good, just like my grammar was all well and good up until this point. We killed Al Moalim (Hey, wait a minute), got blown up, laughed at by Clyde, attacked by a billion soldiers, extracted, and thus ended the prologue mission of the game.
Only four more missions to go? I don't think so, mates. This farce has been going on for eight days now, I'm done with Army of Two.
