Army of Two: The 40th Day Preview

It's all about playing alongside your buddy

For a start, melee attacks are now mapped onto one of the pad's face buttons. This may sound like a minor addition, but anyone who played the original AoT will attest to the fact that close combat was awkward and generally a big pain in the brown eye. Now it's much easier to simply smack someone in the face, and as a result it's far simpler to dispatch foes who manage to sneak up on you. On a similar note, you can now sprint - another seemingly slight change, but one that greatly facilitates hit-and-run tactics (previously you were good at the hitting, but not so hot at the running).

On top of these refinements, EA has promised a fresh selection of co-op strategic options, including the ability to feign surrender for the purposes of creating an ambush. I'm also told that there will be moments within certain missions where Rios and Salem are presented with a moral dilemma that affects how they choose to proceed. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to see either of these features in action last week, but in principle it's reassuring to know that the developers are trying to expand the scope of the action.

What I can say for now is that the game is already looking pretty slick. There's plenty of detail to the character models, and the zoo itself worked well as a memorable location. While it sounds ridiculous in principle, there's actually something very grim about hiding behind a dead hippo while a troupe of thugs shower you with bullets. We've all fought through a million factories and warehouses before, but a zoo is something of a fresh setting for this kind of action. The gunplay itself also seems to be shaping up nicely, offering plenty of opportunities to switch between weapon types without being too stilted. It can be quite annoying when a game forces you into a particular combat style, but here you seem relatively free to choose your approach: if you want to snipe you can do so, but if you want to rush the enemy then that can work too. Hopefully this freedom will tie-in well with all the new co-op tactics.

And if nothing else, it looks like 40th Day will satisfy our appetite for destruction. My hands-on with the zoo stage ended with a fight against a sub-boss wielding a grenade launcher. As Rios and Salem ducked in an out of cover, including the wreckage of a downed chopper, the heavy rained down fire from his vantage point atop a rocky outcrop. Once again, co-op proved vital here, with one player distracting the heavy while the other fired at the ammo packs on his belt. Needless to say, it's a bad idea to carry explosives right next to your genitals; after a handful of hits, our new friend disappeared with a loud BANG. I'm not sure where he went, but I like to think that the hippos and rhinos were waiting for him when he got there.

Army of Two: The 40th Day will be released on the PS3, PSP and Xbox 360 on January 12, 2010.