Salem and Rios are back in Army of Two: the 40th Day. As a routine mission in Shanghai coincides with a terrorist attack on the city, the duo are forced to fight to survive while they try to uncover the mysterious organization behind the chaos.

We quite enjoyed the original Army of Two back in 2008. Amid a slew of third person shooters it made a noble effort to stand out from the crowd with complex, tactical, action-packed gameplay and on the whole it worked really well. The only major niggle was a tendency towards repetitive battles as each arena filled up with enemies while you flanked and stalked and shot them repeatedly in the face.

To all intents and purposes, The 40th Day is a very similar game – you have the same buddy actions, the same Aggro-centric tactical gameplay and the same central structure of pitched fights and minor boss battles and some solid quippy interplay along the way. The action film mechanics have been amped up considerably – not least because you are basically playing in the middle of a disaster movie. In the opening salvo, planes fall from the sky, landmarks topple and buildings shift alarmingly as you try to make your escape. It doesn’t approach the building rocking awesomeness of Uncharted 2 but the scale of the destruction is impressive and, along with solid level design, adds a little spice to the sometimes dreary office block trawling. And there’s a trip to the Zoo. What city break would be complete without a trip to the Zoo…

Encounters are generally arena based with a number of possible routes and plenty of cover, which your player will now stick to automatically. Games with no dedicated cover button can sometimes feel a little inaccurate but in the 40th Day we rarely got glued to a surface by accident and moving off and mantling are both smooth and intuitive. The rest of the gameplay is centred on partner instructions and the Aggro metre – whereby you can command your companion to advance, hold or regroup, all with the d-pad keys. A second press of the button toggles between a passive and aggressive stance, with the latter drawing more aggro. As the aggro meter moves towards one character or the other, he becomes more visible and draws more enemies – giving the other player a chance to flank unnoticed.

It sounds overcomplicated but actually works really well as you move from cover to cover and issue orders on the fly. And the much improved AI means that pathfinding nightmares are a thing of the past and your computer-controlled sidekick might even manage to one-up your performance from time to time.
EA Montreal has made a number of additions and refinements which make for a much smoother play experience. Top of our list after the first game was a faster, more efficient way to access your upgrades and happily it’s now just a button press away whenever you aren’t in combat and the interface itself is greatly improved.