"Budda-budda-budda! I shot you!" "No you didn’t and anyway I was wearing a bulletproof vest!" "Is it laser proof?" "Yes, duh." "Oh." And so on. (Turns out his vest wasn’t grenade proof and he was blown up in the end.) But yes, balmy summer days pretending to be a soldier, and cosy winter days playing with green plastic soldiers frozen in one pose: it was so long ago. But look how far we’ve come, look how we’ve grown. We can play at being soldier in so many different ways, and the latest different way is with a friend, on a screen, helping each other do stuff. With gusto.

After Army Of Two’s little hiccup and subsequent delay, two whole things have changed as far as we can tell since the dubious preview code we played a while back. There’s a little less swearing for starters, it felt far too gratuitous before but now it’s not just as jarring. But the best change to have occurred is the removal of the revival system.

The stupid old one which had you facepalming at the mere suggestion of it had one player mashing buttons to perform CPR and the other one walking towards the light. It was glib, irritating and in no way added to the game. And with its removal you’d think you’d then be up for a brilliant non-stop bit of blasting that is specifically designed for you and a friend to enjoy... ah no, you’re not going to find that here.

This is partly down to all the head butting, ‘hurring’ and ‘hoo-hahing’ that goes on between the two main characters, Salem and Rios. They hoo and hah at the simplest things, you might have just destroyed a mine that might have temporarily wounded you but this results in a metaphorical back slapping of the highest order. You can actually act out these moments of male bonding with a button press, you can also reprimand your army buddy with a slap, but other than looking silly it has no advantage whatsoever. It’s not like you’re taunting the enemy and receiving a reward for it. You’re just hoo-hahing at each other for barely any reason. In real life it’d be like getting a high five for taking a piss and only splashing your shoes a wee bit. Totally pointless.

And it’s partly down to the complete impossibility of relating to either character. You hate them by the end of the first level because they’re being whiny bitches, even the big one, then you hate them after that for becoming workers for a Private Military Company. Companies which are getting used in real life, and that leaves a bad taste in the mouth because these people aren’t out to make the world a better place or defend their country, they’re just in it for the money, they’re not accountable in the same way as a government army and lots of bad sh*t is getting through the... ah, this is not really the place for that kind of talk.

We suppose at least you’re not some sort of super soldier capable of taking on huge armies on his (or her!) own, but when all the advantages of having a partner along for the ride boil down to things you should be able to do on your own but now can’t, then it’s a little hard to take. It’s just a bit stupid when there’s a wall that’s too high to climb up, not that you can actually climb anything on your own anyway, and you have to get your buddy to help you up it. It’s not so bad in one-player but the whole protracted sequence is neither fun nor quick, or even has any point to it. In two-player you have to line things up, press buttons and push the stick, and then once you’re on top of the ledge you swear you could jump to on your own you have to turn round and help your mate up by dragging them by the arm.

These sort of events only happen in certain places, it’s the same with any double entendre move this couple has. It’s all so very scripted; rappelling, getting vehicles, switching weapons, providing ammo – you either have to do stuff when the game tells you or not bother at all. They’re not so much an army of two but an army of ‘told what to do’ (notice we haven’t gone with ‘army of peeyoo’, nor ‘army of poo’, similarly ‘army of number twos’ or ‘army of shoe’, though that last one doesn’t make any sense).

The ability to switch weapons is also rather ridiculous. When in one-player you pick what you want to use for the whole level, you pick up ammo along the way, so why the hell would you even think about swapping weapons? It’s even worse in two-player because the other person isn’t going to be thinking “Hey I really need his gun, wonder if he’d like my pea shooter?” because that’s not going to benefit anyone.

The other thing about all the different guns is that, well, they kill people. All of them. Some kill a bit quicker than others and some are slightly more damaging to others, but you only get this sense that maybe you’ve picked the wrong killing machine after you get into the level. But not much.

It’s still possible to cut through all the enemies no matter what weapon configuration you’re carrying. All you have to do is hide behind a box, lay down the suppressing fire, fill up the Aggrometer and let the other guy do the work. Attracting the attention of the enemy will make them focus on you and if you do it enough then everyone will be shooting at you, leaving your partner to swing around and shoot them in the back of the head. Well, that’s the theory anyway. What really happens is you end up standing about aiming at the enemies’ heads until they all drop.

This is because the system is inherently flawed. When entering a gun battle one guy has to shoot until everyone is shooting back at him, meanwhile the other guy is doing nothing, waiting for the point he turns virtually invisible and can exploit it. This makes for incredibly dull battles as one guy sits blasting blindly away from the safety of behind a wooden box until the meter fills up and the actual killing commences. The thing is, no one wants to wait that long or be stuck in this semi-stalemate and so it just descends into another co-op shooter. That is until you’re told once again to use a double sniper move to blow up a tank of fuel at the same time. Because the guns provided aren’t strong enough to do that on their own?

Perhaps they’re not and we’re just being overly cynical, but no matter how many times you upgrade and customise your weapons so they’re all shiny and new you’ll never be able to take down a fuel tank on your own.

Even the vehicles available don’t offer you any sense of freedom, someone’s got to drive and the other guy has got to shoot. In one-player this means you end up switching between driving, which is dull and boring, or doing an on-rails shooting section, which is also pretty tedious. In two-player it means you either do an on-rails shooting section with someone who doesn’t know where to go, or drive about not knowing where to go.

Eventually it comes down to how much you like your friend. Can you take it if they walk in to the same mine over and over again even though you’ve spotted it on your high-tech binoculars, shouted at them for walking into it and even told them to hang back until you’ve sorted it? If you can get some kind of simultaneous, on-the-same-wavelength thing going on with your human buddy then that’s all well and good, but you will be back to taking all the enemies at your own speed within a matter of minutes.

It’s strange how Army Of Two’s system works so much against it. You would think, and it has been the case with say Halo’s or Crackdown’s multiplayer, that this kind of teaming up would be fun. But it’s just not when you have to rely on it so much, rather than offering you new ways to play a shooting game it hems you in and makes you perform all these actions when the game requires it from you. Which leaves you following a completely linear path straight through all the many identical looking bad guys, and with all the shouting and banging of heads in celebration, or anger, you’re basically just left wondering what the hell this is all for. You’ll not get much enjoyment out of it, and the poor sucker you drag into it with you will hate you. Possibly forever if they’re any good at holding a grudge.

Tim Empey