If one of something is good, double that is always going to be better, right? That and the synergy of playing with a friend are what EA has tried to capitalize on with Army of Two. The combat system revolves around one person pulling everyone’s attention to him through the “aggro” system. It’s meant to be a strategic device and involves one person constantly firing away at the enemy so that the other player becomes functionally invisible, making it easy for them to sneak around and attack from behind or the flank. It’s an interesting system and one of the game’s central mechanics, but unfortunately isn’t always as helpful as you would expect. While useful in some situations, when you are facing a horde of at least 20 soldiers, including a group of suicide bombers and people armed with rocket launchers, the person generating aggro winds up dead rather quickly.

It is a great idea, but it isn’t allowed to really permeate the game as it should. A lot of the new ideas in Army of Two are like that – concepts neutered by level design and other poor decisions. Take the partner healing system – cool concept made cumbersome by the game’s camera zooming in extremely close to you as you are trying to administer aid. This forces you to have to look at the camera of your partner, but that doesn’t quite work since the controls are reversed on the other screen.

Two more features worth highlighting are the dual sniper and back to back modes. Dual Sniper lets you time an aimed shot with your partner to take out dangerous pairs of enemies from afar. You can do this at anytime and if you perform one from far enough away, it can break the intended progression of some of the levels by throwing off the sequence of events you are supposed to trigger. Needless to say, some of the fun of a game is lost when you are wondering if you are killing off certain enemies too soon.

The other dual move, your back-to-back maneuver, allows you to do exactly what it says. You and your buddy face in opposite directions mowing down all that comes your way. A fun inclusion, but it suffers the polar opposite problem of the sniper mode – it seems scripted and only available at predetermined points in the game.