Zero Punctuation: Army of Two
escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials...Posted Apr 2, 2008, 4:10 PM UTC
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escapistmagazine.com
Great review -- sums up my opinion of the game pretty well.
Everyone who hasn't bought it yet -- rent Army of Two and go buy Rainbow Six Vegas 2 instead, or simply wait for GTA IV.
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Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is a $60 expansion pack to a game that you can now pick up for as low as $30.
Instead of settling for these poor releases, go pick up some of the titles you neglected to purchase from the '07 holidays, or even earlier in that year.
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or Call of Duty: 4
I suppose that's preference but it should be said I agree totally with you.
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Well, CoD4 came out during the '07 holidays, so I thought I covered that. In any case, if someone hasn't picked up CoD4 yet, they must really hate the FPS genre, because that game is the gold standard by now.
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I hope not. Martyrdom is probably the worst gameplay mechanic ever, and the multiplayer is crippled without the matchmaking features of xbox live because the gameplay and maps don't adapt well to large scale games like in Battlefield.
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but it's a really,really good expansion.
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Everyone keeps saying that, but I liked the first game so much, all I wanted was tweaks: improved graphics, more guns, improved A.I. I dont' regret getting the sequel at all.
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Me and my friend purchased Army of Two. The co-op is actually pretty fun. The computer AI is pretty bad though.
RSV2 is most definitely an expansion... bought it too though.
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No, I'd suggest renting both.
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Monday, Tuesday, Yahtzee-day, Thursday...
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when will these "Yahtzee-Day" references fucking stop.
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three Yahtzee-day's after the apocalypse.
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Ok, I have a short rant that I have to get off of my chest while we are here talking about an EA game.
My favorite game right now, I'm semi-embarrassed to say, is NHL08. Why? Because I'm a Canadian who grew up playing hockey and playing hockey games. I love them. NHL08 comes with online play.
Lately I've been addicted to competition, so this progression was perfectly natural once I got a next generation gaming console. I've played hours and hours of this game - approximately 500 half hour games so far. I'm not too bad at it, and win most of the time, although I don't consider it much of a feat since my competitors are mostly 10-15 year old kids.
Now that you have the background, I'll start my rant. EA has terrible QA. Terrible. Every single EA game I've ever played has terrible balance issues, in game glitches, menu glitches, user interface problems, you name it, it's there.
NHL08 issues I've personally witnessed so far:
- Hits that don't stop. A player gets hit, and falls over. No one touches him, but he's hit again. And again. And again. Until the whistle blows, occasionally, generally ending in an injury. Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73gExyzSaV0
- Goals that glitch through the back of the net.
- Rules not properly implemented. I've reffed hockey since for 6 years. I know the rules of the NHL. Nearly every possible rule is implemented improperly. Now, sure, I understand that it is difficult to be perfect, and that some of the rules are hard to understand, and that they produce a new game every year so QA is difficult, but seriously - NHL94 didn't have these problems.
- Games freeze, online mode has glitches were the game keeps starting over and over for no real reason.
- If you create a new roster - one of the major selling features - you have to download a new roster every time you play online, even if you downloaded it AND saved it the previous time. So many people don't know you have to manually save it in a different location to prevent that.
- Online play requires that you have an updated roster to play - but starts matching you for a game before it even checks if you downloaded the rosters. This leads to a lot of time of waiting for people to respond when matching online because of the previous issue.
- Menus in the game have different options depending on the game mode. There are some good reasons for this, but a lot of the time, useful options simply aren't there and I can't think of a good reason for it at all.
I could probably list another ten problems I've found with it, and this doesn't even include the fact that the menus in the game are so hard to understand and their are little to no directions for anything.
EA can suck my balls.
I wish that their games didn't have so much potential. Every one I've ever played is just a cock tease - top of the line graphics, a great start on gameplay, but tons of glitches and bullshit.
Ugh.
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short rant?
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Like I said,
I could probably list another ten problems I've found with it
This hardly comes close to the rage I've had due to bullshit in this game. I actually destroyed a disk by tipping my xbox over when I was so pissed off by a glitch that I stood up, forgetting I was wired and at the end of the wire. Luckily, I pay for the stupid insurance at EB Games for the disks, so I got a new one for free. But man. I can't believe they can get away with selling shit like this.
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hasn't stopped you buying them has it
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If there was a better alternative, I would be all over it. I'm not saying that they don't have the right idea - they make awesome titles with awesome concepts. They are just lacking in quality.
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From what i have heard EA aren't entirely reasonable when it comes to release dates leading to deathmarching coders and sloppy Q&A.
I'm not sure how true it is but it would seem to explain most of your gripes (bugs and features which would probably be coded later)
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Well first of all, Company of Heroes is developed by Relic and published by THQ, so I'm not sure what EA has to do with that.
Secondly, there are lots of studios within EA. Even if there are some decisions that are made company-wide, individual studios have a lot of freedom to make their games the way they want to.
I'm getting a little tired of the constant "it's got an EA logo on it so it sucks" mentality, and especially when it's only based on one game like it seems to be in your case. You automatically dismiss games from like a dozen studios all over the world just because they're owned by the same company that happened to make you upset in this particular case?
Again, valid gripes, but don't take it out on all of EA.
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Thank you. I actually work for the studio in question (EAC), and although I can't speak to the actual quality of NHL08 (I'm not really a hockey fan), I will say that we have an incredibly rigorous QA process. The fact that we don't manage to fix all the problems is probably more due to poor systems design and unrealistic technology adoption.
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The studio in question, I'm pretty sure, is EA in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Is that the one you work at?
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I work at EAC, which is in Burnaby. EAX is in Vancouver, although really it's all Vancouver.
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I actually work for the studio in question (EAC)
So do I. :)
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Oh, my bad. I knew that about CoH, but I had a few beers and was too ranty to think straight.
However, I'm not the only one with complaints. The Command and Conquer series has some gripes against it also. See Jeremy from purepwnage.com's rant.
But I understand that EA is a company made up of a lot of smaller studios, so I guess I can't blame them all.
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Yeah, C&C3 got its share of complaints, which I personally find weird because I consider it to be the best one in the series! I've played a lot of RTSes (Warcraft, Starcraft, CoH, SupCom, C&C, RA, etc.) and I was frankly surprised at how fast-paced and Starcraft-ish C&C3 was, in a good way! :)
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Yeah. That's my problem with the games they produce - they are always top of the line as far as gameplay goes, but miss in some of the simple details.
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I love that guy.
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This game is worthless. The aiming is horrible, the weapon mods don't really do anything, and they, annoyingly, force you to use the two player aspect.
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The 2 player aspect is pretty much the point of the game, isn't it? I don't see why that would be an annoyance, unless you didn't know about it when you got the game. In which case, why would you buy a game without finding out about it first?
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Read my post below. It's not really the two player aspect I dislike. It's the way they implemented it. You can only use your friend in magic trigger spots to get over things. Your aim is horrible, so you have to flank them. It just seemed better in concept and in the trailers.
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I'm not defending the game, but you sound pretty clueless bashing a game called Army of Two for forcing you to work with a second player.
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I don't mind making the game two player orientated. I think it would be neat, if they incorporated it to make single play that much better for using your partner. They, basically, make your aim shitty as hell, so you have to incorporate it. They tried to hard with making the characters help each other over things, too. If it was an open map where I can get creative and use each player, it would be awesome. Most of the time, though, I had to search for the magic point that triggered the interaction. It seems like they had a good idea, but failed to implement it correctly. It, at least through the first part, seemed to focus on the idea of mercenaries being great of the US, instead of actually building a decent game. I think Frontline is the same way.
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Press select to open the GPS to find those certain spots. Also, you can do more if you use the arrow keys. One things I see as being a problem is that it gets repetitive, but it was an enjoyable game all around. Plus, I could always land headshots in that game.
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I agree... I am glad I waited for the demo. I would be PISSED if I spent $60 on that turd.
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that's what gamefly is for
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I would be all over that if it was $10 a month... I don't know why but $15 is just too much.
Also, I am really bad about putting things back in the mail. I have had 3 netflix DVDs sitting on my kitchen counter for the last 3 months :(
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-
Stand up
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Walk over to your kitchen counter
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Pick up Netflix DVDs and put them in your mailbox
???
- Profit of your investments (or just start pirating movies)
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That's what piracy is for.
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I don't do PC gaming anymore, and I don't want to crack open my 360 because it will void the warranty. I'm sure it will red-ring again before the warranty is up so that's pretty important.
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Something makes me think that red-ringing is Microsoft's solution to console modding.
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I third that. I heard it was out and almost stupidly got it. By a stroke of chance, I rented it first.
I'd just like to thank whatever powers were at work that day.
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I've been screwed over too many times to blindly spend $60 on a new game anymore.
Games are overpriced IMO. I don't mind spending $10-20 on a game because even if it sucks it's not enough money to worry about, whereas $60 is just enough to piss me right off.
I've recently discovered the used games at Blockbuster, they have some pretty sweet deals. I picked up Earth Defense Force 2017 for $10 and it's one of the most fun games I've played all year thus far.
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I know what you mean. I likened the experience (had it played out I bought it) to the one time I would've opened an .exe before scanning it - it containing a virus or malicious tool.
You're not stupid, you know what you should do. You just. Didn't. In a frenzy of whatever. One of those, nobody-to-blame-but-yourself situations that make you sigh deeply.
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I enjoyed it. Short and sweet, and pretty fun. A little repetitive at times, but all in all a fun game. The online is definitely fun.
Its no GTAIV or R6:V2, but I beat it twice with a friend.
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We need more of this guy.
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Looks like another one I'm glad has come and gone, along with Turok.
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this guy kicked much more ass than i thought it would. the only issue i really have with it is trying to find a public coop game. the interface is horrendously fail. you pick what level/difficulty you want to play, and sit around and wait until it finds someone for you. ugh. just show me a list of available games or something like that. if someone wants to start a level before/after what i want to start, give me that flexibility.
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Heh. Boosties. The one PA Podcast also talks about Army of Two.
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The one PA podcast? here's the feed, buddy
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Nice. I hadn't heard of this guy before, and his reviews just plain rock.
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Could anyone explain what is all that 'zero punctuation' stuff about? I have been seeing it for a few months but never understood what it was...
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He talks fast.
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An anti-steve sutton.
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it's retarded, i must say.
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i say its genius... havent laughed like that for a while now
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Basically, it's a canned gimmicky way to take a humorous approach to game reviewing, but it's very popular because Yahtzee, the guy who does the reviews, actually does a very accurate job of critiquing the games. Sometimes he gets lazy and reviews a crappy game and spends the entire review making fun of it, but he always makes up for it later.
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[deleted]
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meh. talks to fast
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Sweet, a game he hates again. I was beginning to think he liked everything.
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He liked COD4.
Genuinely.
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[deleted]
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He's been pretty tame for the last 5 or 6, IMO. Nice to hear him rip into one again.
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Portal too
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Hate cloaked video links
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It's zero punctuation, but there's punctuation in the title. hahaha, im so original.
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*punchpunchpunch *
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[deleted]
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Reviewer should try breathing sometime.
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it's called "zero punctuation" numbnuts. That includes commas and periods.
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Redditors have extremely short attention spans. He has to cut out the breathing for habbadash folk.
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This guy is actually pretty spot on with his reviews.
He is almost always spot on. I live with a few gamer roommates and this game is par considering the pick-up-and-murder style it has. Also the graphics are relatively impressive (or at least par).
I would give it a 6.5/10, and double the gay jokes. At the same time - who doesn't like a kickass co-op shooter?
I am always severely disappointed with co-op shooters. They've always struck me as single player with a friend, instead of any kind of co-operative work involved. Other than a few gimmicks ("boosties" and "Hey, I can't reach the button, you go get it"), there's no real point to having two people most of the time.
The only good co-op game I've ever played was Spliter Cell's (I forget if it was pandora tomorrow or chaos theory), but sadly it was only a few levels long, and the levels weren't quite interactive enough.
I imagine Ubisoft could make an amazing co-op game using the assassins creed engine with splinter-cell's gaming style. I certainly hope they do.
GTA4 is rumored to have Co-Op online....
holds breath