Playing through Army of Two is an experience that’ll leave you sad, in a way.  You’ll want to enjoy this game–you really will–it’s just that the game won’t actually give you very many good reasons to do so.  And yet, when it actually DOES, you get your sense of hope back, only to have it quashed once again by virtue of having no further reason to enjoy it.

The plot of Army of Two, sadly, won’t be a huge help either in terms of making you love this game.  You follow Army Rangers Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem as they become disenchanted with the army and leave to join a private military contractor outfit called SSC, Security and Strategy Corporation. From there, they’ll be running various missions over the course of fifteen years, and even be indirectly involved with a scheme you may have seen recently in theatres—to privatize the military.  And they’ll even work to bring about the downfall of said scheme, which is kind of weird considering they’re working for a company that would directly benefit from such a scheme.  And, even better, after fifteen years with SSC, they start their own company, Trans World Operations.

Yes, that would be the pun…two guys who make an army of two, who eventually become the army of TWO as an acronym.

This is actually a pretty fair storyline, and will send you all over the world doing a whole bunch of awesome stuff in an effort to keep organizations like yours, and the one you’ll found, strictly on the sidelines.  Of course, the problem with Army of Two is that you’ll have almost nothing to DO with any of this awesome stuff because you’ll be too busy running around and shooting stuff.

Much has been made over the fact that, if you’re playing alone, you get an AI partner.  This definitely qualifies as an interesting development, if it weren’t for the fact that your partner has mental candlepower somewhere in the crustacean range.  Seriously—I was holding a car door to use as a shield for this brain-dead troglodyte in Somalia so that he could get behind me and shoot.  I figured he’d be able to aim easily since I had my car door held in a fashion that suggested that every car in Somalia has somehow been reinforced with some kind of steel plating (seriously, folks, if you’re ever in a gun fight don’t use the car door as cover.  Any round of any serious power will blow right through it.  You’re MUCH better off ducking behind the engine block, because that thing requires a chain hoist to move.  But I digress.).

Wait…where was I?  Oh yeah, moron with the car door.  Anyway, I’m holding this thing, and I discover that my partner is so brain-damagingly stupid that I not only have to hold the cover up but I also have to walk him in FRONT of the enemy I think he should shoot because his skill with a rifle marks him as a CLEAR graduate of the Spooky Mulder School of Firearm Use (motto:  We’ll empty an entire fifteen-round clip into a swamp but we STILL can’t hit an alligator the size of a small car from a range of eight feet.).  And don’t even get me started on what happens if you give your partner a boost up to a ledge or overhang or some such and he gets shot before you can get pulled up to join him.  That’s just annoying.

You’ll also get to dress up in costume, including wearing patently ridiculous skull-shaped face masks (yes, that’s a brilliant move…nothing like going into combat with absolutely ZERO peripheral vision!  Clearly, their time in the Rangers taught them this.) and when you do a whole lot of killing you’ll be allowed to give your colleague a congratulatory fist bump to let him know he done good, because otherwise this knuckledragger would have nary a clue that he was doing something right.

Special side note: Army of Two must have some kind of problem with the military because they make it ABUNDANTLY clear how much more awesome it is to be a private military contractor.

Anyway, if you ever wanted to play a first person shooter from third person perspective and thought it would be awesome if Lenny and George from Of Mice and Men could handle the action, then Army of Two is the game you’ve been spending long nights awake for.  Otherwise, just walk on past and maybe try ANOTHER first person shooter.