First of all, let's just get this out of the way. Nolan North = Elliot Salem. FML. People who know me in real life are aware of my well-documented meltdowns whenever Nolan North and Karen Strassman are in a game I play. It's inevitable. All that's left is for Nolan North to be in a Persona game and the universe will likely come to an end.
Anyway, Army of Two: The 40th Day, starring Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, is a buddy action comedy directed by Michael Bay. Of course most literary duos do consist of an umpbridge and a loose cannon. On a side note, we need more Steve Zahn because he performs brilliantly as the latter--his appearance on an episode of Monk is an exaggerated example of those pairing, while his role in Sahara, not so much. I allude to Bad Boys, for multiple reasons.
1) Michael Bay jacks off to disaster porn. Full disclosure: I am from Shanghai. I have an attention to detail. I bitch and moan. The architecture is very Western-inspired, and makes me wonder if the team actually took reference photos outside of Pudong. Let's discuss environments: the game mostly takes place in the Pudong and Hongkou districts, with the chapters starting out in a post-60s office building. Do note that over there, construction uses far more bamboo for struts and temporary supports. We waterslide down a mid-30s skyscraper and are treated to all sorts of falling buildings, just to show off the physics engine, and I presume, not to preload textures for the next portion of the map. You think they'd learn to utilize the Unreal engine a little better if they have time for pointless unskippable cutscenes. Later on you traverse the streets of Hongkou, which are admittedly sorta close to real life, though there aren't nearly that many winding alleys and the run-down places are far more run down than this disaster porn can capture. The zoo is filled with dead animals. Hippos, gorillas, monkeys, elephants, etc. And optionally, a dead tiger should you choose to kill it to unlock weapon parts. The hospital is very westernized and strangely devoid of random blood everywhere, so it felt out of place as I have actually gone to a hospital. Google for China Hospital Lines for an example of how people actually get trampled to death waiting for medical care in China. In real life. The mall is actually close to what a real mall in Pudong looks like. Except for the giant satellite receiver. Which you blow up. Unsurprisingly. Next is The Bund, a faux-colonized street with plenty of German-derived architecture. It looks quite nice and, if we were to take away all the cover, stationary guns, mandatory crates, and GIANT SHIPPING CONTAINERS, it'd resemble real life. Except for the green tint, which I guess is a good thing since the earlier portions of the game were very red/orange and visual variety does help. Finally, we go to the "temple" which, in real life, is just "the old city" and is a tourist trap. There aren't stairs or anything, just lots of shopping vendors and Starbucks (Xinbake, ask for it by name or you'll get ripped off). And the icing on the cake? You C4 open the inner keep to confront your enemy. If the FDI troops don't destroy something, it's you doing the destruction.
(You know what this game is missing? Violence against Space Elevators. See: Gundam 00, Halo ODST.)
2) Michael Bay jacks off to helicopter porn. Again, whip out your Google Fu and you'll find that Michael Bay always has helicopters flying into a sunset in his movies. Bad Boys. Transformers. The Island. Here, we've got helicopters crashing into buildings, dropping off heavy troops, and finally UN helicopters flying back into Shanghai. Search Youtube if you want to have a peek. A few I couldn't identify easily but I did spot a Mi-17 and a MH-53s. The MH-53s at the end are incredibly detailed and I just realized I've basically sold 20 copies of this game to Michael Bay fans.
3) Somewhat capable female ally. Alice Murray was complete trash in Army of Two. You had to carry her on your shoulder and were limited to your secondary weapon and slow move speed. Now she's back, wielding a G36, and able to do anything your partner can: heal, pull aggro, make sandwiches. I've also noticed she has breast physics. Quite the upgrade, my dear. How is this fap material for Michael Bay? Just replace her with Tea Leoni and you've got the same thing. Edit: How could I forget Scarlett Johannsen and Megan Fox?
Well, let's get on with a more serious look into the game.
Language - Four languages are spoken. Bro English, Shitty English, Mandarin, and Wu. Fake accents are fake, Nolan North is actually a convincing actor in this role, and the Chinese languages are used correctly. News broadcasts are in English and Mandarin, and actually make sense in a Cloverfield sort of way--exposition via emotion rather than content worked, but an ability to speak Mandarin will let you actually understand two broadcasts. I love the hostages. They speak authentic Wu, and are whiny arrogant bitches. A man says "I don't want to die, I have children" right before he's crushed by a bus. A woman says "You think you're all that just because you have a gun?" A few more "please don't kill me" and "please don't shoot your gun" and "what are you doing" scatter the dialogue. (Word of the day: polysyndeton).
Customization - This is what made the prequel very fun. Now, you're just purchasing parts and mixing them with receivers for....weird and ugly combinations. I suppose it's why we have paintjobs and camo now, to cover up the ugliness of our guns. I was turned off by this since the demo, but I've discovered that only on the 1st playthrough is this an issue--you gain more parts and eventually there isn't much motivation to keep that ugly part because a more visually symmetrical part does the job almost as good. I've found out that if your gun looks good, it actually functions quite well for its role (I've recreated a Special Operations SCAR, turned the AK-47 into a 74 paratrooper carbine, and the FAMAS into what I've seen in the FELIN project vision). So, try to keep your guns visually similar (by using a floating rail on your M416 and keeping AKM barrels on your AK-47) and they'll perform well. You can actually tune your guns to perform to any stat level with this system, so I guess it all comes down to preference. Some guns are incapable of headshots and some can receive exclusive part upgrades, so keep this in mind before you try to turn an AK into a marksmanship rifle. We now have bayonets. They give us satisfying animations that don't necessarily kill enemies faster. I'd recommend not using them, as they only go on shotguns and rifles. SMGs and pistols allow you run faster, which is ideal with a bayonet, but cannot equip them. We now have ghetto mods, which are ultimately pointless unless you badly, and I mean BADLY, need a silencer or a bayonet. I will note that the Rusty Stock part is actually very useful. Slap it on the MP5 and, with the right suppressors and camo, will generate no aggro.
Mile High Club - Remember the end of MHC where you have to save the hostage? This happens all the time in hostage situations (which has caused many quickloads because my partner is a little bitch), as well as twice with your partner (forcing us to quickload out of failure to form bromance). It's a stolen gimmick but in the former scenario, is quite fun. Blatantly stolen and frustrating because...
Completionists and OCD - The game takes a mandatory 2 playthroughs to unlock all the parts and see all the comic book cutscenes. That's about 12 hours commitment. Extraction Mode plays nothing like Gears 2's Horde or Halo ODST's Firefight. Various enemy types from the campaign return, but with different weapons (the flamethrower heavy now uses a SCAR, the grenade launcher heavy uses an RPG) and are far more aggressive--they'll run around and give you a much harder time. To survive this game mode, you'll need to memorize spawn patterns on top of managing 4-man aggro to finish off the easy ones first, and then gang up on heavies, one at a time (as sometimes 2 will spawn at once). There's no way to get around this, it's something like Firefight in that knowing spawn patterns let you finish off the mass cannon fodder.
Removed features - Overkill mode was a great way to let your partner go stealth and rack up some kills, but that's gone now. It's actually part of the design by default, but there's no more bullet time and damage multiplier involved. Co-op snipe is now built-in, and can be done at any time. Certainly makes more sense than sniping a propane tank. Weapon swap is now absent, but that makes sense as we now have anytime weapon customization and public co-op. I miss this feature the most as it lets new players get a taste for more powerful weapons. Feign Death is now changed so we can't use it as an aggro-cleanser, and lets one partner go full stealth for a rushdown. This can all be overlooked because new features, such as mock surrender and the ability to equip a primary weapon to the special weapon slot, are vast improvements on the design.
Mandatory capture level - Yeah, get caught, get your weapons taken away. It's a freaking staple of the FPS genre. Half-Life did the best because right before you're captured, you fight backflipping latex spies. The room going dark right as you approach the door is just so fitting. Half-Life 2 does it even better by replacing your arsenal with the most fun weapon in all of video games, a messed up gravity gun. In 40th Day, it's somewhat fun since throughout the game, you're allowed to temporarily take dropped weapons and add to your arsenal. This level isn't as disruptive to the game design and really captures the procure-on-site feel. One note is that there are two weapons, the flamethrower and the gatling gun, which are exclusive to this feature. I'd suggest using it as your high-aggro weapon or your main rifle, as those are the most common weapons (Remington 870, M4, SCAR-L, G36).
Extra party members - For some parts of the game, you get a 3rd or even 4th party member. Alice and Breznev are very combat capable, and working with Breznev just feels awesome--he's got similar gear, his own personality mask, and a machete. He's like Clyde from Army of Two but foreign and on your side. Why isn't he playable in multiplayer? Qin, the little boy, is cute and all but he doesn't do much. A zookeeper just gets in the way and soaks up bullets. In the final level, if you were in positive morality, will have 2 random Chinese guys sent from Dr. Wu to help you out for 2 arenas. They're pretty useless, don't cooperate with you (just sorta go off and shoot stuff), and are completely unrealistic because it's established fact that Chinese people can't shoot. Still, it is interesting to have more than 2 party members in this style of game--and should possibly be explored in future titles in this franchise. But when it's a decision to choose between money + weapon parts (evil) vs allies + weapon parts (good), I'd go with the evil route for the first playthrough. The only real draw of good morality is that Dr. Wu will unlock the automatic Glock 18 for you--which is essentially a poor man's SMG and great for low-aggro rushdown, but not essential if you're playing on Casual or Normal.
Bleh, morality - This game is all about escalation. Fights get more intense, bosses are more in number (up to 3 on the last arena), the hostage situations get harder, and the morality choices get more interesting. It's interesting because the last two involve violence against children--but mostly because they have moments of irony, culminating in a classic Dead Man's Switch scenario with an expectedly reversal. These cutscenes might as well be an advertisement for the upcoming comic. This is part of a larger problem, as free will is just another gaming gimmick.
Collectibles - meh. Japanese cats? How does that make sense? Cute and all, but really? Well, it does make some sense because this game is more and more converging on Metal Gear Solid. (MGS3 had the cute frogs, so I guess cats are close on the cuteness). The radio transmissions, wow, it's a stolen concept from System Shock 2, Doom 3, Bioshock, Halo ODST, et al. But these transmissions are played only in menu, so in essence this is a step BACK in technology. It does ultimately make sense since the other games have long lags of loneliness, and the Army of Two series is much faster paced. This makes me question the very need for these collectibles--the cats are cute and placed in weird places, but the radio transmissions just have newscasts, one is just a 3-second long scream, and the others are just Jonah preaching to China.
Jonah - I hate Jonah. He mixes patches from Army and USAF. He talks about modern society from some weird Biblical perspective and aims that message at China. He clearly doesn't know much about China, even after we make an allowance for the Bystander Effect (we're callous, yes, but we're all about connections). He's only seen in menu screens until the final cutscene. He's the worst villain in literature, ever. No attempt was made to develop his personality and his hypocritical doublecross is easily expected. Are we going to get DLC where we actually get to fight him like we did for Dalton in Army of Two? The Biblical allegory finally comes into play in the final cutscene for only one of the 3 endings, refering to the legend of Minerva's 40 days to repent. And how do cruise missiles and running over civilians accomplish Jonah's goals of making humans reconnect? Or is he so arrogant that he believe himself to be God's device? Haet.
I fucking give up. Buy this game when it drops down to $40 after the rest of you get Extraction unlocked, and download any DLC that comes down the pipe because it'll likely be good. Online versus is brutal (makes playing Gears look easy).
Bonus: My singleplayer setups:
Balanced:
Primary: Vector Kriss-V with 50rd mag, RDS - this is great for anti-heavy ops.
Secondary: Glock 18 with 33rd mag, silencer - great for rushdowns against cannon fodder, also pretty accurate so you can sharpshoot
Special: Milkor MGL with 10rd mag, Masterkey undersling - cannon fodder, high-aggro ops
Sniper / High-Aggro
Primary: H&K M416 customized for damage + precision - just remove the scope and you've got a medium range weapon.
Secondary: IMI Desert Eagle - if you're low on ammo (you shouldn't ever be), a great backup weapon
Special: Barret .50 - doesn't matter how you customize it, a chestshot will kill cannon fodder
Rushdown / Low-Aggro
Primary: MP5 customized for low aggro, Eotech reflex sight - does blindfire well, and can plink.
Secondary: Type 77 customized for low aggro - seriously this gun gets no aggro at all.
Special: FSB Shotgun with a silencer - just press X and it'll equip to special slot.
If you've got a setup you like, post em in the comments.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
Fucking Signed.