About the game
Army of Two is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Electronic Arts. It was released on 4 March 2008 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The story follows two mercenaries fighting through war, political turmoil and a conspiracy from 1993 to 2009.
The main feature is co-op play. Nearly every objective needs both players to work together, whether the partner is a human or the Partner AI. Armour and weapon parts can be bought and swapped, with barrels, stocks, grips, suppressors, gun shields and underslung launchers. A firing range was planned but cut. A jeep and a tank were planned as drivable vehicles but were removed for pacing, and only a hovercraft stayed, in the China and Miami levels.
Online play is four players, two to a team, and is region-locked. Players with the European, American and Asian versions cannot play each other. EA said the lock was to prevent lag and because the Asian version is censored. There are three game types: Warzone, Bounties and Extraction. Warzone has random primary and secondary objectives, Bounties is a hunt for the enemy leader, and Extraction means getting VIPs or prisoners to a safe point. The team with the most cash at the end wins.
Two Army Rangers, Elliot Salem and Tyson Rios, join the private military company Security & Strategy Corporation (SSC) after a 1993 mission in Somalia. Their jobs take them to Afghanistan, Iraq, an aircraft carrier, South Korea, China and Miami, where they find that their own employer has been setting them up.
Two DLC packs came out in 2008. The SSC Challenge Map Pack arrived on 24 April and added a 2 versus 2 online mode with four maps. The Veteran Map Pack arrived on 29 May and added a co-op map in a Kyiv subway, an expanded Versus map, more destructible objects, six secret achievements and an alternative ending with a boss fight against Dalton. EA shut the online servers on 11 August 2011 and both packs were delisted in 2017.
Critics praised the co-op play and were less happy with the AI and the difficulty. Metacritic lists the PS3 version at 74 out of 100 and the Xbox 360 version at 72. In the US it sold 831,000 copies in March 2008, 224,900 of them on PS3. Famitsu scored the Japanese PS3 release, which came out on 19 March 2008, 32 out of 40. Two sequels followed, The 40th Day in 2010 and The Devil's Cartel in 2013.
The text above is adapted from Wikipedia and licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
What critics said
Metacritic 74 out of 100 from 43 reviews (PS3). Individual reviews: Famitsu 32/40, GameTrailers 7.3/10.
Extra content
Two map packs came out in 2008. Their online parts stopped working when the servers closed, and both were delisted in 2017.
- SSC Challenge Map Pack: A new cooperative 2 versus 2 online mode with four maps.
- Veteran Map Pack: New co-op campaign map set in a Kyiv subway, an expanded Versus map (China Canal Lock), more destructible objects, six secret achievements and an alternative ending with a boss fight against Dalton.
Good to know
- Online play was region-locked, so the American, European and Asian versions could not play each other.
- The Asian version is censored, for example by removing the shooting of bodies that are already dead.
- A jeep and a tank were planned as drivable vehicles but were taken out for pacing reasons. Only the hovercraft stayed, in the China and Miami levels.
- A firing range for testing weapons was planned and cut because it did not meet the team's standards.
- Both DLC packs were delisted in 2017 and their online parts stopped working when the servers closed in 2011.
- A graphic novel, Army of Two: Dirty Money (2008), follows Rios and Salem's early missions.
Made by
Developer EA Montreal, Producer Reid Schneider, Designer Chris Ferriera, Designer Vander Caballero, Artist Hugo Dallaire, Writer Corey May, Writer Dooma Wendschuh, Writer Keith Arem, Composer Trevor Morris.
