Kill it With Fire in Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel

Hank Hill would love Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel. The towns of Mexico that mercenary duo Alpha and Bravo fight through in the third iteration of the third-person bro-op action series are straight-up littered with bright, red, combustible propane tanks of all shapes and sizes. And they’re just begging to be shot and exploded. That means the affable, soft-spoken propane salesman from King of the Hill would be able to retire just by following in the masked men’s wake, hawking new “propane and propane accessories” to the locals to replace the ones that just got immolated.

That’s the hook in the new Two game: rampant destruction. Aided by the geometry-shattering qualities of the Frostbite 2.0 engine (the first two entries in the series were built on the Unreal Engine), The Devil’s Cartel feels much smoother than ever. No longer are its bad guys a bunch of burly bullet-sponges. Here, as we found out while playing through a 20-minute section of the game’s prologue, an intuitive, Gears of War-like cover system enables snappy headshots and flesh wounds that bring enemies down at a much faster clip than ever before.

"Sorry bro, you don't have enough tattoos to hang with us!"

And while The Devil’s Cartel’s story is attempting to be a bit more serious than its trying-to-be-funny-but-it-didn’t-really-turn-out-that-way predecessors, its gameplay is actually borderline hilarious. In a great, over-the-top way. As you kill bad guys, you earn points that slowly build up your Overkill meter. Nailing headshots, doing cooperative kills (i.e. both of you shoot the same guy to bring him down quicker), etc. earns you more points.

Now the fun part: once the meter is maxed, you can press LB to enter Overkill mode, which turns you temporarily invincible and significantly amps up your damage. And when both players enable Overkill simultaneously (as I made sure to during my hands-on time), it amplifies the effect. Essentially, it’s like Berserker mode from Doom, but with guns. Limbs explode off of foes’ bodies, heads roll, and everything blows up – most notably all of those aforementioned fuel and propane tanks. During one Overkill burst, I melee knifed a loco local in the face and his head simply disappeared into a puff of red mist. It was AWESOME.

EXPLOSIONS. SEVERED BODIES (see it on the right?). ARMY OF TWO. THREE.

Need another reason to play, and another reason The Devil’s Cartel seems to have a better handle on its intended tone this time around? Both BigBoi and B.o.B are unlockable, playable characters in the game, joining contemporaries 50 Cent (Blood in the Sand), Snoop Dogg (Tekken Tag Tournament 2), and Ice T (Gears of War 3) as hip-hop artists to have appeared in a video game. Aww, yeah. Oh, and a mask editor will let you fully customize your mercenary’s identity-shielding visage too (our EA co-op partner had a panda bear painted on his).

Now if only Hank Hill could be added as a playable hero too. “Dammit, Bobby…”

Ryan McCaffrey heads up IGN Xbox. He used to own a DeLorean, which is weird. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, on IGN, catch him on Podcast Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.

Source : ign[dot]com