14 DAY TRIAL // Army of Two was a game that looked great on paper, as well as in theory. If you've never actually got your hands on it and all you saw were the cinematic footage and the trailers, you might thinks that this title was awesome. But, when it came to the actual product, both the critics and the fans agreed that this wasn't something to get excited over. While there were a lot of good ideas in the game, there were a lot of bad ones as well and, when it came to putting them into practice, all of them turned to be a flop. Even so, Electronic Arts thinks that it learned a lot from its mistakes, and not only does it have a second Army of Two coming up, The 40th Day, but the company is "absolutely" committed to the title.
EA Montreal's Matt Turner had a talk-through with CVG about the upcoming game, and revealed some very interesting standings concerning it. The first thing that was admitted was that, while the title didn't prove to be a quality one, the fact that it sold was a huge plus for it. "The original didn't do that well critically but it did quite well sales-wise, so that was a big thing for EA. We've got two great characters and an interesting world to tell videogame stories," he said.
He further added that, "We also have a talented and experienced team at Montreal that's been able to grow and learn from our first game in a huge way. Those things together, for the big-wigs at EA, is a win-win situation." And, as far as things go, it looks like he may be right. From the first few glimpses that the Army of Two: The 40th Day has received so far, it appears that this is a major improvement over the first, but that doesn't mean anything is set in stone just yet.
When asked if the franchise could survive another failure as far as reviews were concerned, Turner said that, "That's something that I honestly don't know. I would hope so." What we can pick up form this statement is that the possibility that this won't prove to be a good game is well part of his expectations, as he didn't reject the idea of negative reviews at all. "I like working with these characters and these games but that's going to be up to critics and we'll see how that gets received. I hope it does because it's a great game but I've no idea until it happens."