Army of Two: The 40th Day [PS3]

Demonstrating a game can be tough. Sometimes the equipment will fail, sometimes the pressure of dozens of people watching your every onscreen move can get to you, and sometimes you get punched to death when you're not looking -- that last one happened to the fine folks showing off Army of Two: The 40th Day and its split-screen co-op today when an enemy got a bit too close. After that, the demo duo rebounded nicely and moved through the section, but it was only after the room's collective laugh.

No, we weren't laughing at them, we were laughing at the in-game recap: "You Died. You were beaten to death. Try using melee."

The next installment of the Salem and Rios legacy is set to hit stores January 2010 and set the blastin' duo loose on a Shanghai in distress as terrorists run rampant through the streets. Today, I got to kick the tires on the game's first map as the boys came across a trio of bad guys holding two people hostage.

During the guided demo, the folks from EA snuck up on the one gunman not pointing his weapon at a hostage, grabbed him, and used him as a bargaining chip to get the other terrorists to drop their weapons. From there, the team shot the bad men to death and freed the civilians. To me, Rios and Salem aren't down for that kind of heroism. When I burst into the room, I shot the solitary gunman to death, turned the barrel of my machine gun on the two guys cowering behind the civilians, and blasted everyone in the room to death.

My morality took a hit, but I still got extra ammo for the move.

From there, it was the traditional Army of Two: The 40th Day gameplay we've written oh-so much about. I was able to tag enemies on my GPS so that my partner could see the unseeable foes, I could "feign death" when I was getting shot at to fake bad guys out, and the Agro system is still alive and well.

Eventually, a "heavy" shotgun-wielding dude came onto the scene. These massive men are going to be covered in layers of armor and come in a variety of weapon-packing versions. Like most of the heavies you've seen in other games, taking this guy down meant Rios and Salem needed to pop him in the head as much as possible while he lumbered around the level without taking any buckshot from his boomstick.

Interestingly, the guided demo ended with the shotgunner just standing there and taking a handful of shots to the face from both of our antiheroes. This was just one noodle-scratching issue I noticed in the preview. The AI in general didn't seem to be all that bright, and the framerate was taking some serious dips during gameplay. Of course, this is just a preview and the game's got a whole lot of time before it'll be showing up in your house, so fans shouldn't freak out… yet.

This event also gave the world its first look at the new weapon customization in the 40th Day. When you're blasting baddies (and good guys in my case), you're earning cash and rewards. These bonuses can then be put toward making your weapons bigger and better. At the loadout screen, you can pop into your primary, secondary, special, and extra weapon slots and mod the guns there so that their Agro, Handling, Precision, and Damage ratings increase. You can put a camo skin or heart pattern on your sniper rifle, a better barrel on your shotgun, and so on. Look for scopes, suppressors, and more in the final game.

Like I said before, Army of Two: The 40th Day is coming in 2010, so you won't have to wait too much longer to pull the cover off of an electrical box and use it as a shield. Although the game looked a bit rough around the edges today, the first installment definitely has a healthy following and this one seems to be bringing the same co-op play and boatload of bullets.

©2009-09-23, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved