Only one, the yellow ones, takes advantage of the Aggro system. There are only three enemy types: blue guys, who are normal grunts the red guys, who are normal grunts but with higher HP and the yellow guys, who you can only kill from the back. It honestly comes across as this Aggro idea was a last-minute addition rather than building the game around this Aggro idea. While the developers had this great concept in mind, it seems they didn't care about crafting the actual meat around this skeleton of the idea. Considering the last shooter I played was Medal of Honor: Vanguard, which might have the single worst sprint mechanic I have ever played, Army of Two felt like a game with an incredibly fluid movement. The cover is required to strategically fight the enemy, using diverse abilities in a variety of ways, sending your teammates to flank enemies or draw fire, etc.Īlso, I can't help but appreciate how this game has no sprint. It is like how Mass Effect 1 and 2 combat wasn't just used for reloading. This makes Army of Two's cover system a core part of the gameplay loop, constantly moving around and managing Aggro, pinning down enemies. If you fire on the enemy, it attracts the enemy's attention, which allows the AI partner to charge and fire, and vice-versa. It is a reversal of Brothers in Arms' suppression mechanic. Like you have to very, very closely stick to the right side of the wall to see shift the camera to the left.Īnother innovation is the Aggro system that works together with the AI partner. So what happens is when the player is covered and wants to peek out to left, the character doesn't obey my command, for he just aims forward rather than leaning. While the organic cover system is great, unlike Tomb Raider and The Last of Us, the player can't shift the shoulder view to left and right during the normal aiming. It is leaps and bounds over any other contemporaries. It turns out, Army of Two did it first, 5 years before those two games. This removes the jank that interrupts the flow and allows the player to be constantly on the move. This means the player can also hold down the fire button and simultaneously move out of cover and into another cover without any type of hiccup. The player can also blind-fire as the player moves along your cover. There is no time wasted pushing a button to go to and from cover. What is great about this is that if the player wants to change his mind that instant to not go into that cover, he can just keep walking. If the player is close to anything that could be used as cover, the character will protect himself, without pushing a cover button. The first, I thought it was Tomb Raider 2013 or The Last of Us did the first smart cover system in which you crouch behind cover and Lara automatically ducks and lowers your body to match the cover, and you can flow in and out of cover without "snapping" to it. While the general gunplay itself isn't all that different from Gears, this game put a unique spin on the formula. WinBack, Syphon Filter, and Everything or Nothing didn't play all that great, but they felt unique and fit the style they were going for.Īrmy of Two stands out, released in 2008 when every Gears-inspired TPS seemed already stagnant. Now, the Gears control scheme is harmonized and I feel it stifled creativity. I miss how many TPS before Gears tried to create their own unique control schemes and formula, even if they weren't all that successful.
ARMY OF TWO MASKS METAL SERIES
I'm just saying the series's combat loop has not much evolved in a significant way unlike what other competitors did to its template (which is why I believe that is why the series has lost its cultural status as a gaming juggernaut as it used to be once). This is not to say Gears does the fundamental cover shooting badly nor implying it didn't revolutionize the shooter genre.
Then the genre got quickly stale as every third-person shooter adopted the exact same control scheme. A fluid conversion between ducking and shooting, moving between cover was never this easy. When Gears took the mantle, it was fresh. This is coming from the guy who played the shit out of Kill.Switch (2003) when it came out, which likely invented the modern third-person shooter as we know it.
Just to be frank, I have always had resentment toward the cover shooter genre.
0 kommentar(er)
