Greetings humans, Monki here with a look at EA Montreal's upcoming Army of Two: The 40th Day.
Some of my fondest gaming memories are of the nights when I was younger, playing Doom 2 cooperatively over a 28.8kbps modem on a local BBS here in Austin with three of my closest friends. There was something about a shared goal between everyone, all fighting towards the same outcome that I just never got out of playing Deathmatch. It was the unified effort against a horde of cacodemons or cyberdemons that always signified a good time for me.
Shortly after those times, though, a sudden surge of deathmatch-only titles started showing up everywhere. Cooperative fighting through a story mode dropped off in favor of variations of capture the flag. Utility players gave way to twitch-reactions and super-expensive rigs.
In the last few years though, with the huge upswing of XBox Live and console gaming, we've seen a fantastic resurgence in cooperative gaming. Slowly but surely, cooperative gameplay has been making it's comeback in major titles. Halo 3 had four player coop across the entire game. Gears of War featured a nifty take on two player coop, etc. Then last year Electronic Arts released Army of Two, a game that was meant to be played with a friend. Oh the joy.
The first game went through a few hands before finally hitting the market, and although it was a lot of fun to play, it had it's share of issues. With Army of Two's sequel, The 40th Day, EA Montreal is looking to address some of these issues and make a stronger game.
A couple of weeks ago EA brought me up to their studios in Montreal to take a sneak peek at The 40th Day in a very early state. How early? Very. The visit was a chance to get a feel as to the direction that EA is taking the Army of Two, not necessarily tons of details about the game.
Concept art for the game. (Click to embiggen.)
And in my opinion, the direction they are heading is the correct one. Gone are the insane caricature supermen, replaced with a more realistic looking pair of anti-heroes. Producer Matt Turner walked us through a demo of an incredibly early build showing off the new level design and general tone of the game, and it is quite a shock. He described it as a "hyper-reality." The game takes place in Shanghai and it certainly has a new feel to it that the original title did. The original Army of Two had a distinct "clean" feel to it, everything was a bit too shiny, too nice. That problem no longer exists in The 40th Day. The Shanghai depicted in this one certainly feels like a fully fleshed out city, debris litters the streets, broken neons flicker, buildings crumble around you.
As far as the plot of the game, your two characters are in Shanghai on a routine mission when suddenly, and without warning, all kinds of shit goes down. You watch as skyscrapers across the city crumble in front of you and then get ambushed by a group of oddly dressed soldiers. From that point on, all hell breaks loose.
Reid Schneider, executive producer on the title, talked to us about wanting to put the player into the middle of a destruction scenario, something that is rarely seen in games. The idea is that your characters aren't supposed to be there is one of the big driving factors of the game. All this shit is going on, but your guys aren't necessarily the ones driving that stuff forward. Of course, they'll end up "in the shit" but like Dante at the Quick Stop, they weren't even supposed to be there.
Image from the game. (Click to embiggen.)
