The game that I will be reviewing today is the third entry into the Army of Two series, it's called Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel. Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel is a third person shooter game that was developed by the late Visceral Games Montreal Branch (Which not surprisingly was the very last game they ever worked on) using the Frostbite 2 game engine instead of the Unreal 3 Engine like the previous 2 games, and published by of course by none other than EA. The game was released worldwide for the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 back in March of 2013.
Now, let me say that while I have generally enjoyed the previous two games, I wouldn't say they are by far amazing action games. They've been sort of riding in the middle of the road between being great games and bad ones, I can't say I would say they're mediocre, but there's been a plethora of issues with those games in my opinion. Mainly they just lack depth and substance, which holds them back in my opinion. They do, however, provide lots of fun, dumb action that can be especially entertaining when you're playing with one of your buddies.
It fills a niche, but doesn't go much farther than that which isn't a big deal I suppose. It just would have been nice had it been more ambitious and willing to go the extra mile to become a great series. However, this last game in the series is a boring train wreck in comparison to the previous two games. I would honestly have to say that it feels like they started to devolve backwards where this entry seems like it was the sloppy first iteration of the series. Something that I feel like we rarely see in gaming, and not something I can say that I was real happy to experience.
If you were hoping that the story of this game would be impactful, emotional or engaging then you came to the wrong 3rd person shooter, my friend. This games story has even less substance to it than the narratives from the previous two games. Our previous duo of characters (Salem and Rios) have been replaced with a new set of characters which are sadly about 50 times more generic and boring. They go by the names Alpha and Bravo. See, even their god damn names are insanely generic and boring! You get no backstory on these guys, which really helps for people to care about the brand new characters that you know nothing about besides that they're some badass mofo's. Oh, wait. No. No, it doesn't.
The game features a heavily cliched story that doesn't miss a beat from what you would get out of a cheesy 80's action movie for the most part. Everything that transpires is a thinly veiled excuse just to get to the next point of action. You head down to Mexico to hunt a cartel after you've been hired by the mayor to do so. There's a hated villain you must pursue, though he's very rarely shown or interacted with, a side character who has suffered by his hands and seeks revenge, but of course they fail and you must save them so they can be your buddy and of course we can't forget about all of the typical henchman and bad guys that you have to carve your way through!
The dialogue within the game is pretty downright terrible filled with jokes that only a 13 year old would laugh at, and a lot of the talking is just grunting and grumbling. Even the dialogue written for the narrative is bland and badly done, adding that on top of the cliche story direction makes for a really abysmal narrative to be told as you play through the 8-9 hour campaign of this game. I honestly feel like they should have just cut the story mode from this game and made it a multiplayer game or a co-op game where you just run missions with your buddy, similar to something like what Payday/Payday 2 does. Nothing here is fresh or even fun like the previous games dialogue and narrative. It's truly a step backwards.
The gameplay is something I would have expected them to improve upon considering we're at the 3rd game of the series, yet it still has all of the issues that the previous games had and more. The game of course is focused on teamwork with a buddy, since it's all co-op based. However, there are still issues such as the drop in or drop out system when you're joining or leaving a game. If you're joining into a game that is already mid-way in progress, then the entire thing has to end first so you can restart all the way at the back of the chapter. This is some of the most annoying, stupid shit that I have ever seen in a co-op game. It was done so badly that you were basically punished the same for allowing a player to join in as you would be for dying.
That's not the only problem with the co-op system, as there are plenty of bugs and glitches to be found that can be infuriating. Trying to boost each other over a ledge might result in a glitched out animation where you can't exit it and have to restart from your last checkpoint. You might find yourself trapped in a black screen when you were trying to load into the next area, leaving you no choice but to restart the game entirely. This not only would screw you over but if you're playing with a friend then he's left in an awkward position as well. Even when they don't glitch, the loading screen times are atrocious considering the fact that the game uses less than mediocre graphics and has small level design. Beyond that the game has somewhat clunky and unresponsive controls, a less than stellar A.I. for the enemies and nothing entertaining or fun with the visuals there's just little to enjoy here. Nothing has been improved upon from the past games, and everything has just degraded.
The only changes we've seen from the previous games are that they've removed sections and left it feeling even more barren than I could have imagined. While it wasn't a huge part of the previous games, the moral decision choices did have an impact, albeit a small one, and that has been removed entirely. They've also removed any and all competitive multiplayer modes (Including Extraction) that could have been in the game, which may or may not be a good thing depending on your opinion. While the single player mode is 9 hours long, it does not make up for removing all of these other things from the game. There's just not enough content here to justify the price this game cost when it came out. Especially with the poorly done narrative and level design with poor AI and glitches out the ass.
The combat is a sloggish mess, but it's at least serviceable. It just seems like everything has been stripped down to the barebones, leaving everything in a sea of mediocrity. Then they just tried to paint over it and make it look better than it is. Perhaps if this was a different game series that had the previous two entries be 9 out of 10's you could pull this off, but Army of Two has never been an amazing series, so it just doesn't work. One thing that the game does pretty alright is allowing you to customize your characters with the cash you've earned while playing. You can pick up new weapons, armor and masks to customize to your preference, which is a nice feature. The masks themselves are very customizable, which has always been a fun little section within the games.
While the game is workable, it isn't anything special or even all that fun. It is an uncreative, stripped down game that provides you mindless action that most of the time is boring, though it does have its fun moments here and there occasionally. I personally don't think I would really recommend this game to you guys, and I would say you'd be better off checking out the first two games which were much more enjoyable than this one and had a more interesting set of characters for you to play as. This feels like a less well done game in comparison in just about every way.
Thanks for checking out the review! Appreciate it!