Fancy a bit of aggro?
The main concept in Army of Two is 'aggro', which is an excellent addition to the game, opening up numerous strategic possibilities and multiple ways in which to complete an objective.'Aggro' works by keeping an eye on the 'aggro metre' at the top of the screen. In its simplest form, you gain 'aggro' by shooting at the enemy, thereby attracting their attention to your position. This then gives you the leeway to be able to move your other player into a position further up the battlefield or even to command them into a flanking maneouvre. This can be applied both ways. So, you can command your partner to lay heavy fire at the enemy and then once you see that he's got their full attention (by checking the metre), you know you're free to move into position. You can chop and change tactics, which you'll need to do if you do get spotted and you can switch between various commands, such as holding, covering, advancing or regrouping, working closely with your partner throughout the game in order to overcome some tricky opposition.
If you or your partner gain enough 'aggro' then the one who isn’t in the firing line can use the 'Overkill feature', which allows them to be invisible for a certain amount of time, so you can blindly sneak behind a enemy on a turret, take him out and then use the turret on the rest of his buddies. Of course, it's not realistic in the slightest, you can literally walk in front of their faces and they can't see you, but it’s a really nice feature that comes in extremely handy due to some really stalwart opposition.
Click for larger image
Click for larger imageThe co-op work doesn't end there, because there are also many other things that you'll need to do as a team. If your partner goes down, you can rush over drag him out of the line of fire and heal him; he'll also do the same for you. You can also enter co-op snipe mode to fire a bullet simultaneously to take out enemies or swap weapons with him if you run out of ammo.
There's also a really neat feature called 'back-to-back'. It's a huge pity that 'back to back' can't be executed at any point in the game, but when you do get those scripted moments, it's a great deal of fun. You enter this mode when you see a circle appear on the ground. You walk into it and you and from this point forth, until you’ve died or eliminated all enemies, the action takes place in slow-motion. Enemies' ferociously attack you from all angles and you need to take them down as quick as possible. There are some great animations as you hit them in the legs and watch them topple over or blast them in the face and watch their heads roll backwards, but it's nothing that I haven't seen before in other games (some of the sequences in Stranglehold are visually similar). Nevertheless, it's interesting to see it in a war game and to all intent and purpose it works really well and makes a nice change to the main crux of the gameplay, which generally involves frenetic battles where you're pinned down by half a dozen or so enemies and you need to move up the battlefield slowly from cover to cover whilst tactically using the 'aggro' function.
The most enjoyment I got out of playing co-operatively with my AI opponent was working out exactly where I was going to send him and figuring out exactly how we were supposed to get past a guy on a turret, two snipers and a dozen heavily armed terrorists.
