Army of Two: Demo Thoughts

First, and foremost, if you haven't checked out Yahtzee's review of Army of Two, you should.

I'm not sure how fun the demo would have been just as a single player experience... But as a co-op demo, it went pretty darn swimmingly. Luckily it seems to be popular enough that broadcasting for "first available" partner took only a few seconds.

Me and my partner (I don't tend to use the headset, so I'm not sure who he was) were dropped into a tutorial. We quickly plowed through it -- and you know what, even though it was a standard boring tutorial (aim, move, basic squad tactics) it was so much more fun to be able to play it co-op even without voice.

We quickly got into the main demo mission (probably the first mission of the game) and while it was less polished and didn't feel as good as Gears of War, it was definitely fun enough to keep me going for a 15-20 minute ride with a complete stranger.

I'll add it to the rental list and try the single player, but I'm not sure it will be quite as good. It's nice not to have to micromanage your squad mate -- which I didn't have to do in the co-op demo because even without voice chat we developed a reasonably useful system of communication.

I was initially sad that there wasn't a single player component to the demo -- and I likely would not have tried it had I not been doing some research for a friend as it's pretty intimidating to jump in with a stranger. That said, I give EA credit for sticking to their guns and forcing people to experience the online co-op.

Of course, I could have ended up with a total jackass who screwed around and dropped out after 5 minutes (leaving me stuck to do the tutorial again with someone else). But... there ya go.