Army of Two: The 40th Day

Army of Two heroes Salem and Rios may live by the “Bros before…well, everything else” philosophy, but gamers live by the “execution before ideas” mantra. The pair’s 2008 action-adventure debut brought a lot of interesting concepts to the table — namely, 100 percent cooperative play from start to finish — but failed to execute on a lot of the little things, miring EA Montreal’s effort with repetitive action, static environments, and numerous interface problems. Not to mention a grating attempt at humor.

Still, the game sold well enough to warrant a sequel, so executive producer Reid Schneider and his team have taken player feedback to heart for the mysteriously subtitled follow-up, The 40th Day. “It’s all about layers and choice,” he told us during our visit to EA’s Montreal studio.

Their choice of location seems like a good one, for starters. The game’s set in the Chinese city of Shanghai over a short time frame (probably two to three days), and the exotic Eastern city already goes a long way toward making good on creative director Alex Hutchinson’s promise that Day will feature “no docks or warehouses” and that “80 percent of [its locations] have never been seen in a shooter.”

In the segment we were shown, Salem and Rios (the former having been trimmed down to more realistic, less-cartoony proportions to help differentiate him from the latter) started down an alley. Wind swirled around them, kicking up garbage and debris. Laundry danced on clotheslines, and NPC citizens milled about. With this living, breathing backdrop, the sequel has already improved upon the lifeless locales of its predecessor — and nary a bullet has been fired.

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