Army of Two: The 40th Day [PS3]

It's obvious that going into warfare as a hired gun is dangerous, requiring you to trust and believe in your partner to help you when the bullets start flying if you don't want to go home in a body bag. Salem and Rios, the main characters of Army of Two: The 40th Day, know this well, combining their skills to take on overwhelming odds and survive. Up till now, we've only seen sections of the single player campaign, but we've been looking forward to see what changes had been made to the game in its multiplayer or versus mode. At a recent press event, we were fortunate enough to see segments of the co-op, as well fight our way through three multiplayer modes.

To start off the presentation, everyone in attendance was told that the first Army of Two has currently sold more than 2.6 million copies, making the world spanning adventure very successful. Part of what made the first game so popular was the co-op play, and EA Montreal wants to continue to capitalize on this by providing multiple ways for players to get through the sequel. As a result, players will have the opportunity to play through The 40th Day with partner AI (for single player matches), localized splitscreen games or on-line co-op. To demonstrate the co-op mechanics, we were shown an action sequence that took place in the laundry area of a newly abandoned hospital, where Salem and Rios were forced to take on a group of flamethrower wielding enemies. Packing armor and facemasks mucks like those that Salem and Rios wore, it was clear that a frontal assault was completely out of the question. Instead, one player would have to draw the enemy's attention until his partner could take aim at the fuel tanks on their target's back and cause enough damage to blow them up.

With the demo out of the way, we were given the chance to play three of the four multiplayer modes, which, unlike the first game, will be region unlocked for the sequel. Also unlike the first game, which was limited to battles between four players, the 40th Day will allow for up to twelve players to fight in multiplayer. The first mode is Co-op Deathmatch, a fast paced battle where you and a partner are considered to be a "team" unto its own. Because of this partnership, you're only able to request ammo from or revive your partner (or be revived by him) if they fall in combat. This places a premium on teamwork, because if your partner decides to be a lone wolf, you're going to constantly find them shot and crawling along the ground as they try to get to safety.

The second mode is called Control, a Capture the Flag variation where up to six players on a squad fight their way across a map searching for randomly spawned checkpoints, or flags. Standing within the radius of a checkpoint will slowly turn the area into the color of your squad, and your team will have to hold the area for a while to ensure the control of the location. Once the game recognizes that you've held the checkpoint for long enough, your team gets a point, at which time a new neutral checkpoint is created. The third mode is Extraction, but it plays out much differently than it did in the original game. Instead, it is more like a combination of Left 4 Dead and Gears of War 2's Horde mode. In The 40th Day, four players are placed on a team, fighting their way through waves of enemies to advance to new areas. The overall objective is to clear out all of the enemies and eventually make it to an extraction point, at which time you'll be rescued. Extraction will be exclusive for a month to consumers that preorder the game, giving them a head start on other players. The fourth mode, Warzone, also returns within the sequel, but we weren't shown that mode. However, it's more than likely that the mode has changed as well.

At the start of every round, as well as every time you respawn during a fight, you're given the choice to select between weapon loadouts of a primary and secondary weapon. These range from sniper rifles and shotguns to machine guns and pistols. There's at least eight to ten separate loadouts for you to choose from, so you can determine if you want to be a sniper, close quarters specialist or an assault trooper. As you go into battle, you earn four points for every enemy you shoot down, and if a player is incapacitated and in need of being revived by a partner, shooting them dead before help comes will earn you one point. For you and your partner, your collective points combine to account for your global leadership stats as a team, so choosing a person you can work with in battle is more important than just surviving from round to round – it can affect your team standing in the overall community. What that potentially translates into is unknown at this point, but the concept really manages to drive home the co-op focus of the Army of Two franchise.

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