Game Review : Army of Two

While still waiting for big hitters like 'Grand theft Auto IV' and 'Metal Gear Solid 4' to appear on the ps3 front, I decided that i needed a distraction while I waited for these video game giants to bomb into the scene. That distraction turned out to be a bit more than I hoped for in the form of 'Army of Two'

Basically its about these 2 guys, hence the name army of two, whom start out as military operative in ths 1st so called training mission and later joined a massive private military contractor, or better known as a PMC. The game starts out with a bit of gore and is peppered with a lot of vulgarities throughout the game. So for unwitting parents out there, this might be a concern for you if you are deciding to get this for your 6 yr old.

The Game

The game starts out with a simple training video that explains what aggro means, which is a vital part of the game. Aggro revolves around the fact that if your are more aggresive, the enemy will put all their undying attention, the the form of hot lead, into you. There is another factor to aggro, which is if you have a bigger gun, you are bound to attract more attention.

So its fairly simple that if your partner has the bigger gun and is randomly shooting in the air, the enemy will be focus on him and you can go about your killing business with impunity without even getting a glance from them. This all works fine if you can control what your partner do or control what gun he starts out with at the start of a mission. there is also a function to allow you to give your partner a positive pat or a negative kick ingame.

The game progresses in a very linear manner and little exploration is allowed on any of the maps. There are many sub objectives that you can complete in each mission but they do very little to add on to the actual storyline, most of these are there just to give the player more money to buy or upgrade his weapons for more potent ways of killing someone. There are also bonus explorative items in the form of suitcases in most missions to also further fund your desire for killing.

Weapons are divided into 3 catagories, primary, secondary and special. Primaries are your main stay weapons, most of them are assualt rifles, there are some shotguns and even a gatling gun and grenade launcher. Secondary weapons are mainly pistols and submachine guns and the special weapons are used for sniping or taking out vehicles.

The Good

The game's AI is very well done, enemies will tend to keep you pinned down with gun fire and their compatraits will know how to flank you and try to kill you with any means available. They will even lob grenades at you on random. If you charged towards them, they know when to flee and take cover at a further location. Only once in a while, when there is no where to run they will come right up to you and smack you in the head.

The range of weapons available is quite good and numerous upgrades for most guns will keep you playing the game a few times thru just to buy all the upgrades for each gun. The stats of each gun reflects the performance of each gun rather accurately thus a gun with more damage tend to stop enemies faster than one with lower damge. This applies for the accuracy as well and one must often trade damage for accuracy. The old saying of a more accurate bullet will kill its target better than a bigger bullet.

Playing the game with a friend is a lot more fun than with the AI as you can tell your friend what you want him to do immediately and his aiming did not suck like the AI's. I completed the contractor mode with my brother in 8 hours of play time and it was much easier to have a 'live' partner than the dumb AI. Only downside to this is that you gotto share the ammo you find when enemis randomly drop them.

The Bad

In single player campaign, it is a pain to rely on your partner effectively and you have to keep cycling between comands to tell him to move or to stay where he is, to be more aggresvie or more defensive. All these has to be done in the heat of teh battle. Furthermore, when you pick up a riot shield, the AI will lock behind you and fire at the enemies while you advance. This would work if the AI hits the targets more often than missing them and not squeeze every road he has in a clip at an enemy in cover only to reload, more often than not, at the wrong time.

There is plenty of ammo for your primary and secondary gun, but if you use a foregrip attached weapon, you will almost never find the ammo for it mid game, well at least I never did. So if say you have a grenade laucher on your G36, the 3 ammo is all you get until you reach mid mission shopping and change out your gun.

Enemies tend to disappear after a while of their death. Unlike in 'resistance' dead bodies are left where they were when you dropped them and you still see them if you back tracked, this gave me a feel of realism back then when I played that game. The game also suffers from slow framerates at certain times, not sure whatthe cause of this was.

The plot of the game is rather simplistic and very short. In a sitting of 6 hours, one can complete the game in recruit difficulty. Playing it in contractor mode will be a bit more tedious if you had to rely on the AI to help you out. i just wished that the missions were more drawn out or more missions were added, Maybe the ability to explore the maps more would be a bonus. I for one would have liked to walk around the aircraft carrier in mission 4 to just to see what a real aircraft carrier looked like from the inside.

Summary

Overall the game is better than average, but its much better to play this with a friend. I would recommend this game to hardcore action fans whom like to play a game on split screen mode with a friend. I give this game 3 1/2 consoles out of 5

Date night

After having mood swings due to al teh unhappy events happening in my life for teh past 2 weeks, Lil miss whiney decided to surprise me by bringingme out on a date night.

1st she surprised me by making reservations at Shin Kushiya, a jap restaurant which specialties include bbqed style food on a stick. The food was good and teh service was excellent.

Then later on she gave me another surprise by booking tickets for 'Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo bay' Which was a hilarious show about stereotyping ppl due to their race or colour of their skin.

Thank you Lil miss whiney for putting the effort and giving me a treat :D

Rock Bottom

You know the saying that when youhit rock bottom, there is no other way but up? Well once upon a time, I hit rock bottom and instead of going up I dug even deeper. But not today.

Things are finally looking up as I finally got back my car and although I had a slight glitch with the right signal light(it started to flicker very fast, much faster than the left signal light) the problem seem to have went away on its own. The guys at Mova assured me if it happened again I can bring in the car and they will fix it FOC.

Maybe my other problem with my package will be solved soon too. Oh btw I got myself 'Army of Two'. You never realize how theraputic it can be until you start blasting people away on the PS3. Maybe when GTA4 comes upon it will even give more comfort.

Miserable

Thats how I feel, be it that my car is still in the work shop, be it that I might have lost $260 worth of stuff in the mail, be it the mounting credit card bills and various debts. I just feel miserable.

Then I read about other ppl's spouses getting things for them when theyknow that their spouse is feeling stressed just makes it worse. Makes me feel unappreciated or worthless at his moment.

Somehow I wish ppl can see that I feel like shit and give a damn. its like I dun matter at all. Then at the same time I have to still care for the stay cat in my work place, still care about the stray dog down at my home. Just wonder who cares for me?

To be fair Lil miss whiney bought me 'Call of Duty 4' when I was broke some time ago, not that I want things from her or anything, just sometimes I feel unappreciated thats all.

Being pissed off

RecentlyI bought some stuff from Germany that was sent backto them becoz the fuckers made a mistake on their end with my address. Neh mind can forgive them for such a mistake coz they are only human.

Then just today when I send them an e-mail I get another willbe away till 21st of april shit. The whole thing started becoz he was away teh last time and he did not reply my e-mail in time withteh trackingnumberto realize that my item was sitting in our post office waitingto be claim but due to the wrong address they could not send a notice out.

The local post also got some fuck up retarded thinking, so do not send a notice nor do you even try to contact the person involved and hoped that someone knows that its there to claim it? WHATYOU THINK I AM??? FUCKING PSYCHIC?

Then when I ask the seller to send me a new package, he says that some of teh parts that i order is outof stock. Today I went to check their online web[age and it did not state any of tehparts I ordered to be out of stock, its either they did not update their website or they just fucking dun wantto sent another package.

I am not sure if any of you are familiar with how post works, but usually return post oftenuse the cheapest(also the slowest) method of sending the package back.So the package most likely is going to take 1-2 months to get backto them. While i already paid $120 euros for it.

Then today when I e-mailed them of the displeasure of finding outthat the items that i ordered are stated to be in stock and why they lied about it beingout of stock and what do I get? I get a fucking auto reply statingthat he is out of town till21st of April. WHAT THE FUCK!!!

I am on the verge of asking for a refund, this coming from a supposed seller that is trustworthy.

Things you need to know after an accident

That is if you are a car driver.

1) Always ask them to estimate how long its going to take to repair the car
2) Change your season parking to reflect on the temp car.
3) If you are claiming thrid party against anyone, you reserve the right to choose where to repair it
4) Insist on genuine parts if claiming third party against.
5) Always check on the status of your car.

Sometimes you only learn of things when it happens to you. Funny i never thought about what I needed to do in an accident until now.

Depression

Depression = No money + Car Accident + $200 of things stuck in the mail

Anatomy of a really bad day

Events of 7th April 2008

07:10am - Left home for work
07:30am - A taxi decided to ravage my car from behind
08:30am - Stuck at teh accident site waiting for a tow truck to come pick my car up
09:30am - Reach workshop to settle paper of the accident
10:30am - Got my rental car
11:00am - Went to local GP to do a check up due to stiff neck
11:30am - was sent to NUH to do an X ray for my neck
12:30pm - Still was at NUH waiting for my turn, had not have lunch yet
02:00pm - Finally got to do teh X ray, still have not had lunch
02:30pm - Still waiting for the review, decided to go have lunch
03:00pm - Returned back to the A & E to wait some more
04:00pm - Finally left the A & E, and there was nothing wrong with my neck
04:30pm - Returned back to work, neck started to hurt like hell
05:30pm - Had to go for RT, neck is still hurting like fark
06:30pm - RT starts, neck hurts, no one cares
08:30pm - RT finally ends(late), had not have dinner, tired, in pain
09:00pm - Got home with dinner, ate and bathed
09:45pm - went to move the rental to the carpark and put night coupon
10:15pm - Got home and watched dirty jobs
11:00pm - Finally gotto bed with a sore neck


Details of teh accident

As I was travelling along Jln Boon lay going into the AYE, a black honda civic in front of me performed an emergency brake. To avoid collision, I perfomed an emergency brake, narrowly missing the car infront. A silvercab taxi that was behind me did not stop in time and hit me from behind quite hard. A toyota vios behind him also could not stop in time and hit the cab from behind thus causing teh cab to move forward to hit me again.

My car had substantial damage to the boot area, some parts of the metal was pushing against the rear wheel of my car which did not allow it to be driven off, I had to wiat for a tow truck. AIG then told me that I had to wait 1-2hrs for a tow service to be available. Soon after a tow truck from a company called MOVA came. The old chap then proceeded to convince me to allow his company to repair my vehicle.

I 1st had an impression that this guy was from the workshop that deals with the taxi insurance and thought that they want to quickly resolve the matter and thus offered to repair my car. Later I found out that this is not the case and this guy just happened to be in the area and offered to help me do my car and convinced me that they will claim against the taxi company.

I hope this not cause more problems for me in future. On the upside, they were very prompt to rent me a car immediately so that I will not be inconvienenced. I do hope that my car will come out in top shape and I do not regret using them.

I got fucked by the post

Sometime ago I bought some stuff online, usually my oline purchases are non events, this time round, everything seem to have gone wrong for me. 1stly when a registered article is sent to you, you should get a notice at your door. Somehow mysteriously, this notice never appeared at my door.

If that fails, a second reminding will be sent to your mail box, somehow again mysteriously there was no such reminder, in fact the only reminder I got was that of one of my neighbour's, being the civic person I am I even went toteh extend of going to my neighbour's place to give him the notice.

Still my package did not arrive. Today a friend of mine showed me how to find out if the package is lost or not, to my surprise, it is on the way back to the seller due to it not being claimed. these are the factors that contributed to why the package came and went back to the seller:

1) Seller was on holiday for a much longer time than stated in his auto reply
2) The notice that was supposed to be on my door some how flew away
3) The reminder was probably put into the worng box, thus I got other ppl's reminder instead
4) The seller did not provide me with a tracking number, only after stating that I did not receive it that they replied me with one.

So now I just paid $20 for my items to take a round trip from germany to here and back to germany. Not sure if they going to make me pay postage again, at the same time the items cost me $200++ and I am stuck btw a rock and a hard place if I do not wantto pay for the extra postage.

All I can say to the postal services here is ....KNNBCCB

Turns out that the seller wants to split teh cost of the shipping, extra 10 that I have to fork out