Army of Two / The Globe and Mail
“Let’s admit it: last year we were incredibly spoiled when it came to good writing in games.
Ken Levine and his team at 2K came along and blew us away by using objectivist philosophy to craft a true work of “interactive fiction” with Bioshock at a point where we were still wondering if it was even possible, and then a small team at Valve introduced Portal, which showed us that sometimes, simply writing clever, funny dialogue was enough (and revealed to us how few games until that point could even boast that).
As a result, we’ve probably got a bit cocky about the state of game writing. But as we all know, pride comes before a fall. And that fall is Army of Two.”
This must be the article with the most juvenile title on The Globe and Mail ever, surely!
Other than that, this review just recounts my painful disappointment with Army of Two. I’ve been paying attention to the title since I spoke to Alain Tascan (I actually called it “one to watch out for” at the time) and the missed opportunity here is almost heart breaking.
I think the saddest think is that a sequel will probably be produced, and will probably go some way to fix the game design problems, but will be unable to “retcon” all of the horrible, horrible writing from the first game out of existence.
March 29th, 2008 : Reviews, The Globe and Mail