Mercenary shoot 'em up puts morals aside

Army of Two

Army of Two

(EA. R18,

PS3

, Xbox 360)

Sometimes in video gaming, it pays to have friends. Well at least - in this case - a friend - and someone who's quite handy with an assault rifle with a taste for serious shoot 'em ups would be a definite advantage.

The good-looking

Army of Two

is about a pair of army buddies who get into the mercenary business in hot spots like Iraq and Mogadishu.

The cooperative first person shooter uses objective based missions, with each success bringing cash for even deadlier weapons, armour upgrades and optional accessories like gold 'gun bling'.

In a two-player co-op, strategy involves using the Aggro system (found in other games) where one player draws enemy fire while the other one sneaks around and launches a surprise attack on the enemies.

When the Aggrometer is full you can execute a number of enemies using Overkill, Stealth and back to back modes in the blazing heat of fire. The learning curve is short and FPS fans have three swappable weapons with logical CS-style physics and easy to get into training.

But single-player is okay if you can?t find a suitably psychotic mate - the computer-controlled partner can stumble through the six missions, as long as you protect him.

You can play either as ex-army vet Salem or Rios - who together discovered that there's more money to be made in a private war - not to mention better weapons.

The keen attitude and constant communication between the two is helpful - a warning to hold up, or to lay down some suppressive fire can avoid untimely death.

Some very nice visual effects keep you engaged such as HDR lighting and depth of field along with a raft of visual gameplay extras like screen pulsing during low health, breathing using sniper scope, and an impressive GPS map.

Other features include using a riot shield, sniping, healing under fire and the obligatory covering fire. This is definitely a multiplayer game and taken online the potential play time is huge.

This is a short humourous shooter where you shouldn't get hung up on morality - for whatever reason some people find perverted, in gaming land it's fun hitting on bad guys (terrorists) around the world, shooting them, punching them, smashing them and yes while wearing a mask disguise.

So let's not get too hung up on the subject matter.

It kind of points the finger at the US army, which has to rely on paid mercenaries to do the dirty work in today's wars. But we don't need to spell that out in the real world, there have been problems.

Some of the

contractors in Iraq

on the US government payroll have been revealed as paid thugs; a private army accused of indiscriminately firing at American and Iraqi troops, and of shooting to death an unknown number of Iraqi citizens who got too close to their heavily armed convoys. Not one has faced charges or prosecution.

I mention this because the poor game has been hit by some criticisms that (as so often happens) takes video games too seriously.

One of the worst is Canada's Toronto Star that thinks the game is sick, getting on the moral high horse: "In 2008, casting private-sector soldiers as the heroes in a video game is beyond obtuse. It is galling, and it is baffling, and also it is just kind of weak. Oh, what adventures they have as private contractors! What excitement they stir! What cool hockey masks they wear!"

OK, so let's just move on. Video games can be a reflection of the world and it's sometimes through rose-coloured glasses or glorifying the ugly side of life but it is all in the eye of the beholder.

Oh, I can't wait for a few weeks 'til Hillary Clinton and the self-righteous moralists start complaining about the next Grand Theft Auto.

MadGamer rating: 8.5/10