a decent game that does not deserve half the flack its given by pretentious reviewers
STORY
The game introduces you to Tyson Rios and Elliot Salem. They are first introduced as army rangers set off into Somalia in order to meet up with a private military contractor Philip Clyde and to proceed with the mission at hand. After the mission in Somalia we see the two rangers introduced to the private military organization SSC. Here the two contractor's story takes the player through a story based over ten years mainly spinning off the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. The story from the get go is shrouded in conspiracy about the nature of future privately funded army's. The story in its self is not exactly ground breaking material from Steven King, but does put the game in context and adds slight drama to an already shady business that revolves around the profiteering current of future world conflicts.
GAME DESIGN
The game itself when it comes to action takes a concept well known from MMORPG games like World of Warcraft the aggro system and takes it into a new style for third person shooters. The aggro system allows the players or player and AI team to take turns taking the attention of the enemy or enemies for the other team mate to kill them. This is important part of gameplay as in some places and situations you cant just become Rambo and take them out in a spray of confusion and gunfire. If u act like Rambo you will have your ass handed to you over and over again. This adds an interesting element into the game design in the sense of gun upgrades. The player can upgrade the gun of their choosing with their hard earned cash with firepower upgrades to ammo upgrades and pimping the weapon to add extra aggro. This really takes into effect as if one player has a heavy machine gun and the other person is trying to keep aggro with an assault rifle he is not going to have a chance. This in a sense is good tho as if your playing with a friend you and your friend can take up roles and switch in game with weapon swap feature if you both feel like a chance of styles. The game play adapts a gears of war style gameplay with the cover system but with the aggro system it adds a little more controlled attention toward you and your partner. The game in a sense works best if you are playing with a friend on split screen or online as the AI although can handle simple tasks will at times break under pressure and just mess up and not respond to effectively when you most need him.
ONLINE
The online generally shines through the co-op campaign as the co-op game mechanics really shine through. The PVP based multiplayer on the other hand is not bad but nothing special, the majority of game types pit you and a friend against an other team trying to complete a series of objectives. The multiplayer ain't terrible but its nothing to rival the current online competitors.
CONCLUSION
In the end the game is a great co-op multiplayer game that has the potential to be a lot more if the series is continued. In saying that the online PVP multiplayer could be looked into a bit further to improve it, maybe add a ground war based game type were there could be multiple amounts of teams trying to kill each other in death match style game play.