While far from the most flattering showpiece for the tech, the Battlefield-powering Frostbite 2 engine means you can leave each area in a significantly worse state than when you found it.
It’s short on gimmicks, the mission objectives are by the numbers, and some of the self-knowing and slapdash humour is, at best, mildly chucklesome, but one thing The Devil’s Cartel understands is when you pull the trigger something cool needs to happen. To malign The Devil’s Cartel for its lack of ideas and polish, however, would detract from how much fun you can get from how little it offers. There’s a welcome, albeit clichéd, shakeup where Alpha and Bravo have to escape from captivity, stripped of guns and gear, having to make do with scavenged weaponry, a couple of sections where the un-dynamic duo are forced to split up, and a barely worth mentioning driving section (or turret section depending on which player chooses the driver’s seat), but other than that all Alpha and Bravo do is dodge and deliver a barrage of bullets against the La Guadaña drug cartel – most of its employees fresh from the local Rent-A-Goon store’s production line, it seems. The campaign is also very light on variety, making the seven to eight hour running time feel chunkier than it actually is.
No, lifting heavy doors together and boosting each other over walls does not count. A few months more and perhaps the cover system could be designed more elegantly, a much missed dive roll could be implemented, and some of the aforementioned co-op moves from previous games could be brought back. Things like the jerky animations, the limp grenade throwing, and the recurrent in-game loading (at least it has the decency to say “please wait”). On a purely technical front there’s nothing here a couple of extra months of development couldn’t fix. Okay, so there’s a definite lack of polish on show that marks out the likes of Gears of War, Max Payne and Uncharted. It’s unabashedly, gloriously gratuitous, over-the-top, plain and simple, dumb, throwaway fun.
ARMY OF TWO DEVIL'S CARTEL MASKS MOVIE
No morally challenging storyline or unexpected plot twist (come on, you can see who’s going to wind up as the big bad villain after the first mission), just dumb action movie tosh. There’s no ham-fisted rudimentary stealth section, just balls to the wall bravado. This is a game that knows what it’s good at and sticks to its guns. No, you come to shoot some fools, and in this regard The Devil’s Cartel delivers. But let’s face it, you don’t come to a game like Army of Two for its relatable characters and engaging storylines (if you do you’re in the wrong place). From beginning to end it’s hard to tell which one’s talking, and they’re so devoid of personality you soon give up trying. More baffling is the decision to side-line protagonists Salem and Rios, especially after The 40th Day went to such great lengths to try and make them more human and likable, in favour of the more po-faced and literal blank slates Alpha and Bravo, who are as indistinguishable and almost insufferable as Ant and Dec (is that possible, Ed.?). It’s nothing to cry over, but to drop the silly gestures as well as co-op manoeuvres, such as back-to-back, synchronised snipe and feign surrender, along with the moral decisions introduced in previous game The 40th Day, means The Devil’s Cartel never rises above conventional shooter norm, while also losing some the series’ identity. But guess what? There’s no air guitar, no fist bumping and no homoerotic arse slapping to be found here. Something seemed to resonate with players, however, for respectable sales have led to Army of Two number three, The Devil’s Cartel. As far as unique selling points go, apart from the now not-so-unique co-op play, Army of Two’s daft and non-gameplay serving hand gestures were hardly the strongest innovations in a genre overcrowded with meathead shooters.
ARMY OF TWO DEVIL'S CARTEL MASKS SERIES
Can you name another gaming series where you could play a round of Rock, Paper, Scissors and slap each other on the arse before strolling into battle, and, after your victory, perform a bit of celebratory air guitar and fist bumping? I thought not.
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