When released back in 2007, Army of Two had a great core principle, however, bad execution prevented the title from being the top notch game it was destined to be. The sequel, The 40th Day, is set to straighten out some of those flaws, and deliver a great co-op shooter. Does it succeed? Read on to find out.

In case you don’t know Army of Two, it centers around, Rios and Salen, two bad-ass, rough and tumble mercenaries, who work from job to job doing what they need to do, which always includes lots of shooting and blowing stuff up. In 40th Day, the two execute a mission in Shanghai, which goes wrong, and you’re thrown right into the action, a sort of “in-medias-res”, and must find out what’s going on. This unfolds throughout the game, and the story is actually quite well told.

The missions all take place in Shanghai, but luckily, it’s not all urban, city based combat, and there’s quite a lot of diversity, despite only having “one setting”. Gameplay wise, there’s a lot of ducking and shooting, ducking and shooting, and then some more ducking and shooting, Gears of War-style. But it works well, and is surprisingly fast paced. The aggro-system is back from the first game, and you can use the feature a number of different ways, rather than the standard “rush” you got in the original game. The AI opponents (and your teammate) has improved as well — something that was definitely desired, as the AI in the previous game was probably the worst part of it. It’s not perfect in the 40th Day, but it’s better. Co-op wise, the game offers new features, like tagging enemies and taking them out, or even taking them hostage, where one keeps them at gunpoint while the other ties them up.

One thing players will appreciate a lot, is customization, where you can not only customize your mask, but your guns and equipment as well. You can even change your weapons, for instance, use the stock of the G36, but the barrel of an AK-47 (or even a sniper rifle). This is by far one of the coolest features of the game, and it’s surprising that no other game has yet to do this (at least to our knowledge).

Multiplayer wise, besides the co-op feature, which is quite good, there are deathmatch, team detahmatch, capture the flag, but just like in the campaign, you’re teamed up with a partner in multiplayer, and here you must work together as well. For instance, you can only revive and be revived by your partner. Visually, the game looks great, but there are some glitches, like texture popping and clipping. Audio wise, the game is pretty realistic, from action to gun sounds, it’s all good and improves on the previous game — which was already pretty cool. Overall, the game can certainly be recommended to any action fan, and definitely if you got a buddy you can team up with in the co-op mode. A few visual glitches and some AI issues don’t prevent the game from being the first great action game of 2010.

The Good:
Great co-op
Awesome customization options
Good multiplayer

The Bad:
Some visual glitches
AI can have issues at times
Short single player campaign

Overall score: 8/10