"You're playing a CIA agent, it's designed to show the atrocities," Turner told CVG in an interview, "It's pretty awful and if you fail to see that side of it than you're not getting the whole picture. That being said, I thought it took it a little far; it was pretty out there. But I like seeing that they have guts like that."

Turner did say the mission's scenes, shown in advance of the game's release, were taken out of context. "When the footage got leaked thousands upon thousands of people saw it on a clip not knowing what it was," he said to CVG. "I'm not saying they were overreacting but people were generating these pretty outlandish opinions even though they didn't know what the scene meant in the grand scheme of the game."

Interview: Army of Two: 40th Day [CVG via Gamers Reports]

Michael McWhertor and I had both seen the game multiple times and, to honest, the somewhat apathetic response among some of our readers led me to think this game wasn't that big a deal, that its collection of interesting game mechanics and sequel status to a game that sold well just wasn't cutting it.

Then I was at an investors conference, of all places, and saw an EA executive put the first Army of Two and Mass Effect on the same slide and refer to the two games with roughly the same sales figures. (A couple of million each.) Mass Effect is big around these parts; maybe Army of Two is just big elsewhere.

With that as backdrop, I recently secured from EA a disc with a complete review-ready copy of Army of Two: The 40th Day. What was on my mind was something different than fun or features. It was relevance. Would and should a gamer care about this game?

Maybe that's a harsh context, but we're leaving a season of stellar holiday games and about to find ourselves in a winter surprisingly stuffed with other games of star pedigree. How does an Army of Two fit into that?

Having played the first two chapters of the game at home, I can say that the new Army of Two might fit into the winter quite well. It plays better than expected, though is marred by some flaws of artificial intelligence. And it pushes co-op design forward enough that series both echoes popular co-op counterparts such as Gears of War and Resident Evil 5 and finds ways, in terms of co-op, to transcend them.

As we've covered before, Army of Two: The 40th Day takes place in Shanghai in the near future. It stars the two private military contractors of the first game, Salem and Rios. A gamer can control one and leave the other to the computer, or, as the game is intended to be played, two players can proceed in control of each guy, either split-screen offline or online.

The game opens with Shanghai on the verge of some sort of cataclysm. Gears of War famously occurs amid ruins, its characters surrounded by Epic Games' noted "destroyed beauty." The 40th day occurs as beauty is being destroyed. A common sight early in the game is the collapse of a skyscraper in the background, while you shoot at military bad men in a crumbled skyscraper of your own. Helicopters crash in the distance. Citizens stumble and yell. That sort of chaos.

You would think a lot about Gears when playing this game because we've got big, muscled men running to cover positions and barking combat one-liners over the thunder of their machine guns. The comparison is not always a flattering one. The characters' stickiness to cover in the new Army of Two isn't as reliable as that of Gears. Playing as Rios, I found that I could only get him to auto-stick to certain columns and walls, not to anything and everything I thought I needed.

The Gears comparison is more favorable in that Army of Two appears to possess a Gears strength, one that is often an EA Achilles' heel: Good level design. I've played enough Simpsons Game and GoldenEye Rogue Agent to know that EA, while superb at high concept, themes and graphics, often falters in the moment-to-moment design of game levels. That is something excelled at in Gears, and it is something that is evident in good flashes in the 40th Day. For sustained minutes at a time, the developers are able to offer a tumble of well-design sequences: the second chapter's skyscraper raid, broken into dramatic floor-by-floor shootouts, then a partners-are-separated-across-a-chasm sniping sequence (a la Resident Evil 5), then a dramatic slow-motion sequence in which the two main characters are lowered hundreds of feet by a crane while taking fire from all sides, and then a highway shootout... What we've got is an EA game with memorable levels that feel like they'd be fun to be replayed, a good thing perhaps considering that the menus for the game suggest that the two chapters I played could be a quarter of the game or more.

But what about transcending its predecessor and those games it can be compared to? That's where Army of Two: The 40th Day shows promise. I played the first chapter both by myself and with a partner. I played the second on my own. In any configuration I felt both the relevance of having a co-op character at my side and a sustained interest in how that could make conventional situations play out in more interesting ways. The designers of the game have smartly presented a varied sequence of co-op opportunities. More interesting than the presence of a wall which the two characters need to help each other surmount are the occasional run-ins with enemies who have taken hostages and other sudden instances that are best sorted out not by one man but by two.

A co-op opportunity emerges: Swiftly shoot the hostage-takers? Sneak up on one and make them a hostage? Or risk civilian death by going in guns firing?

Another co-op opportunity: A nervous, well-meaning security guard wants you to put back the guns you found in a locker. This time the game is offering a moral choice. Obey or ignore? The first player to press a button determines the decision and an animation plays showing how that choice affects the future of that character's loved ones.

Another co-op opportunity: Two unsuspecting enemies are just hanging out, and none have their backs fully turned. Shoot them right away? Or try the "mock surrender" co-op technique, walking up while your partner takes aim and then quick-drawing your gun to finish the other guy off?

And another co-op opportunity: Guys run past you and you can't score a shot. But you can laser-tag them so your buddy can see them and he can take them out.

And another: Two hostage-takers are far across a chasm. You can take out a sniper rifle and "co-op snipe" with perfect synchronicity.

One more: In the elevator, time to play rock-paper-scissors.

What is evident after playing almost two hours of this is that the level design and the things that can be done within the game's levels are not just memorable but open to player ingenuity. It seems clear that the designers have gotten better, that this sequel is an improvement.

What's also clear, however, is that a human ally is best. We're smarter than an artificial intelligence character would be. And, more alarming, we're way smarter than the enemies. If Army of Two: The 40th Day has a weakness, it's that its enemies are still quite stupid. Some stand around unaffected by combat, unmotivated to join the fight. Some walk right into our traps. They're not crafty, not as crafty as us. The game compensates by sending hordes rushing in. And against those hordes there is plenty of opportunity for strategy. It's fun to take them out. And, well, it's been fun to play this game.

So ignore this one at your own risk. But otherwise, keep an eye out. And find a friend who is doing the same.

Army of Two: The 40th Day will be released in North America on January 12 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

"We had this whole market in the US that thought the tone was cool, but in Europe everyone thought it was ridiculous and tasteless and a bunch of frat guys running around", EA Montreal's Reid Schneider told GI.biz.

Their solution? Let players tailor the tone of the sequel to the way they're playing it. "One of the things we learned was that we're never going to be able to please both. So the way you interact with your partner and decisions you make – if you're doing a lot of fist bumps – these influence the tone and the dialogue of your character. If your taking it on a more serious level then the game reacts seriously."

As neither an American nor a European, I feel I'm qualified to say that if you're skimping on the fist bumps, you're missing the point.

EA Montreal's Reid Schneider [GI.biz]

"The Wii market is a little bit unpredictable these days." EA Montreal's GM Alain Tascan told Edge. "We're going to see how Christmas is going to do and while with the Wii we have had very successful titles, we are going to focus on big, blockbuster-type titles. It doesn't mean that we are going to abandon the Wii, but as a studio we want to be ready for new challenges."

The announcement comes only a couple of weeks after EA boss John Riccitiello voiced his displeasure at recent third-party Wii software sales. So, no, Tascan's comments are not a coincidence.

Despite being best known for their work on Army of Two, EA Montreal have been working heavily on the Wii, releasing games like Skate It, Boogie, Need for Speed Nitro and Spore Hero for Nintendo's console. So if they're moving on from the Wii, it puts a real dent in EA's total Wii output.

EA Montreal Re-Focusing On "HD-Quality" Products [EDGE]

Rather, you get your standard multiplayer modes like Control (which is more or less capture the flag) and a special mode called Extraction. Extraction mixes elements of Gears of War 2's Horde Mode with Left 4 Dead's constant location changing for a somewhat different experience than what the default multiplayer modes offer.

There is a catch, though. Extraction is available exclusively to GameStop any retailer's pre-order customers for the first month. After 30 days, though, all Army of Two customers will get their shot at the bonus mode.

What Is It?
Army of Two: The 40th Day is a third-person shooter the relies heavily on cooperative play between two people or one person and an AI-controller partner. EA Montreal Creative Director Alex Hutchinson says that the game is trying to tell a story about saving yourself (and your partner) as opposed to one about saving the world. So expect a lot of running and gunning and be prepared for the co-op strategies to get more complex.

What We Saw
A flamethrower character was briefly demoed for games journalists. Then they turned us loose on the multiplayer modes. I played two matches of Team Deathmatch in the Temple map, two matches of Control in the Aftermath and Crossroads maps and one round of Extraction in the Zoo map.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is due out January 8, 2010.

What Needs Improvement?
Polish, polish, polish! Seeing a tidbit of singleplayer totally ruined me for the Unreal engine's performance in multiplayer. Whereas the fight with the flamethrower guy was pretty and vibrant, the multiplayer models and environments looked a little rough and dull by comparison. Also, there were significant frame rate issues with the host player's gameplay and one or two connection issues. These are all things that solid polish will fix – but after seeing what happened with the Borderlands hiccups, I think it's important developers get this stuff under control before launch, not after.

I Can Get There By Myself: Extraction mode drops players in a map and then sends increasingly difficult wave after wave of enemies at them. Once they've "cleared" a set of waves, they're sent to a new location to face the next batch. The problem I have with this is that the game doesn't let you walk or run to your new location – it just teleports you there and says "hold this position." Like the game doesn't trust me to get there all by myself, or is afraid to challenge me with the difficult concept of "hurry up, but don't ditch your buddy," which drives the other multiplayer modes.

What Should Stay The Same?
Buddy Love: You can, of course, ditch your buddy and hope for the best in all the multiplayer modes. However, the game feels way more fun when you're working with somebody. Having that second player's icon appear on your screen at all times helps you focus on gameplay objectives and can inspire you with neat strategies. Also, going it together means you're rarely ever surprised and you get Achievements for busting up someone else's partnership with a well-aimed shotgun blast.

Other Teammates Can Revive You: In Team Deathmatch and Extraction, anybody on your team can revive you when you're downed as opposed to having to wait for your own buddy. This is a little confusing because there's no icon to tell you when another teammate has gone down – just the icon for your own buddy. However, it's convenient because you will get separated from your buddy every so often and sometimes shot up in the process.

Cover System: Holding down the A Button makes you run while pushing the analog stick, but it also triggers automatic cover when you get close enough to a wall or an object. However, you're not stuck to cover – you can easily hop over or move around whatever you're in cover behind by mashing A one or two more times. Also, if you happen to be running toward cover, you can let go of A and then mash on it again to slide into cover – which looks way cool and is very convenient for avoiding sniper fire.

You Can Turn User-Created Content On Or Off: I can't wait to customize me some pink shoulder pads and an Aggro-happy shotgun. I only hope I'm playing with a host who allows them.

Final Thoughts
What makes or breaks Army of Two is the partner you play the game with. I got stuck with some bum buddies throughout my multiplayer experience and they made everything sucky and frustrating. Having the right partner who knew what they were doing or at least took instructions, on the other hand, made everything awesome and totally fun. Choose wisely.

Extraction comes as a bonus multiplayer mode for GameStop any retailer's pre-order customers. But don't fret — the rest of us will get the mode 30 days after the game's release. Be glad they didn't make that 40 just to stick to theme.

You'll notice fabulous masks in this trailer. If you enjoy them, be glad to know that you can turn on user-created content (such as the mask, armor or weapon customization options) in all of the multiplayer modes to make your posse of two stand out that much more. If you don't enjoy them, savor the part where you can turn user-created content off.

Stay tuned for an actual preview.

Nitro's animated style gets a bit more animated with the inclusion of custom car skins from celebrated brands tokidoki and Upper Playground and the video game culture celebration that is i am 8-bit. Not only have each contributed full vehicle skins to the game, they've also provided more that 140 brushes that players can use to add their own personal touch to their vehicles, from Lamborghini to Volkswagen.

"tokidoki, Upper Playground and i am 8-bit create art with distinct and cutting edge personalities," said Gil Rimmer, Art Director, EA Montreal. "With Need for Speed NITRO, we wanted to give players a variety of ways to customize their vehicles, introducing vivid and fresh urban art styles that have never been seen in racing games before."

Nitro keeps looking better and better. I've been captured by the unique art direction of the title since the first set of screenshots were released, and the contributions of these three lifestyle brands just make things that much sweeter.

Need for Speed Nitro for the Wii and DS is slated for release on November 17th.

Army of Two: The 40th Day is the eagerly anticipated sequel to Army of Two, in which Salem and Rios struggle to ignore their feelings for each other on battlefields around the globe. Be prepared to get your manly fist-bumping on come January 12th, the date The 40th Day lands on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Along with the release date announcement, EA Montreal also reveals that players preordering the game will gain early access to the Extraction multiplayer mode, which pits teams of four against waves of enemies as they move from point to point across a ruined cityscape. Preordering customers will have the mode all to themselves for a month, after which they have to let everyone else come play.

The two private military contractors players controlled in the first are back in Army of Two: The 40th Day, a game that looks to have addressed some of the concerns and criticisms levied against the first. This one's just as big, loud and gunfire-filled as the first, but looks to turn the mercenary buddy-system into something a little more strategic. EA Montreal is even adding a little karmic strategy to the game, with light character progression that might add a little personality to the game.

Is that a good thing? We preview the second Army of Two to find out.

What Is It?
The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 sequel to the first Army of Two, a third-person shooter that focuses on cooperative play. Army of Two: The 40th Day is at least partly set in Shanghai and features the main player characters introduced in the first. EA Montreal has expanded on the concepts of the first, adding new two-player strategies, refined controls, and a new "playbook" interface to aid in communication between players.

What We Saw
We were given a guided tour of Army of Two: The 40th Day's new features with a pair of EA reps, who showed us two of the game's levels. They explained how to "tag" enemies and hostages with the updated interface so that the player with line of sight on the action could We were then let loose on the game with a non-EA employed buddy, who helped us shoot lots of people in the face.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is slated for a "Winter" release, which could push it into 2010, but what we played looked solid, even if not 100% polished. We definitely guided our character into areas that were still untextured, but the game ran well for something that might still be six or more months off. We didn't hear much in the way of wisecracking or one-liners from the game's stars, so there's clearly more work to be done.

What Needs Improvement?
The Playbook Interface: It felt surprisingly barren, lacking in some of the information one might expect from a playbook, but maybe I was expecting something a little deeper, something more along the lines of what we'd find in a Madden NFL game. And that's about the least kind thing I can say about the game at this point.

What Should Stay The Same?
The Bright, Brash And Bold: Army of Two: The 40th Day is gorgeously over-saturated, with brightly lit level design and some fantastic looking set pieces. There was nothing dull or dreary about the demo version of the game we played. Even the two main characters, Rios and Salem, are more enjoyable, in part because they're more humanized than the characters introduced in the first game.

Event Levels: The latter of the two areas we saw during our preview was set in a giant skyscraper ripped in two. We watched as the ceiling of an office complex was torn from above, debris raining down on our character, then took great delight in scaling down the side of that building, now at an angle that made it possible to walk across. Proud EA reps likened it to a scene from the movie Cloverfield. It was awesome.

Simplified, But Deeper: The control scheme is whittled down to the essentials, making weapon switching and finding cover "snappy and dynamic," easier than ever. Players can now sprint, a la Gears of War, and can upgrade and customize weapons more to their liking. There's some "light RPG" stuff and a "morality system" that will be better explained at E3, which we're looking forward to.

Smart Use Of Coop: The enemy and civilian tagging system is brilliant stuff, the kind of thing that will make playing with someone else—and hopefully AI-controlled partners—easier. It will also make things more interesting, as we saw the developers line up a blind shot for the character that didn't have line of sight. Shooting through a thin wooden door, one half of the Army of Two took out half the threat while the other emptied the brains of his target. The "aggro" system introduced in the first is still here, but new moves including a fake surrender add a little spice to the gameplay.

Final Thoughts
With the exception of the fact that EA Montreal seems hesitant to rename the game Army of Two: Total Fistbump Destruction, there's very little to dislike about the game. The 40th Day was, without a doubt, the most promising game I played at the company's pre-E3 event. I'm looking forward to seeing how the decisions to kill or save civilians will affect the story and/or the player, but mostly look forward to going hands on with the game again to explore the playbook a little further.

See, when we learned that the game was going to carry the secondary title with the acronym "TFD," well, we had our hopes set on Army of Two: Total Fistbump Destruction, a title suggested by Kotaku commenter strawberrycream. Then EA is all "It's actually Army of Two: The 40th Day!"

It's like when you're set on having a lavish sushi dinner, then a last minute change forces you to have a freezer-burned microwaved burrito instead.

Maybe it's just me. Here are six screens of buddy on buddy action.

Yes, the name has been confirmed, as well as several of the details leaked last week, including the new setting of Shanghai, where a series of strange catastrophes have the city on the brink of ruin. Our two fist-bumping friends Rios and Salem find themselves in the middle of the action, fighting their way through the ruins as they uncover the mysterious forces bringing the city to its knees. If the rumor holds true, said forces are an army of private military contractors trying to take over the city, but we'll let them have their little secrets for now.

The 40th Day promises to open up the dynamic duo's co-op playbook even further, giving players new strategies and choices as they progress through the game.

With ARMY OF TWO: THE 40th DAY, we're pushing the tactical two-man military team into new battlegrounds offering a completely organic and rich co-op experience to deliver an action-packed co-op shooter this winter," says Reid Schneider, Executive Producer, EA Montreal. "As chaos blankets Shanghai, China, you must rely on your partner to survive as you weave through a broken city left devastated in a mysterious wake."

Devastated in a mysterious wake? Must have been one hell of a post-funeral celebration to take out an entire town. If you ask me, the Irish are involved.

The 40th Day promises to open up the dynamic duo's co-op playbook even further, giving players new strategies and choices as they progress through the game. No specific details were given, but I'm still holding out hope for a maneuver where they hug each other and shoot their weapons from under their arms.

Speaking of hugging, nice to see the PSP getting a little love, isn't it?

Joystiq in particular has received a ton of info from an anonymous tipster, who goes into great detail on the sequel, allegedly titled Army of Two: The 40th Day, which definitely jibes with the "ARMYOFTWOTFD" discovered yesterday in the teaser site's Java tracking. Protagonists Rios and Salem return reluctantly to duty in Shanghai, where a network of private military contractors is looking to take over in the name of a mysterious leader. Throughout the story the player will be making moral choices that affect the game's multiple endings. The informant also mentioned followers, which would technically make the game Army of Two plus guests.

The game improves over the original with enhanced artificial intelligence (sorely needed), environment damage, a deeper weapons customization system, and improved networking for the once again outsourced multiplayer.

Check out the Joystiq article for details on the first few levels of the game, but remember...none of this means anything until we have official word on Army of Two: The 40th Day.

Rumor: Army of Two sequel called 'The 40th Day' [Joystiq]

The official Army of Two web site now has the splash image seen above, but little else. The site's meta content, however, features the description "The definitive third person co-op shooter is back" which would certainly imply a sequel. That is, if EA honestly feels that Army of Two was the definitive third person co-op shooter.

Perhaps the only other hint is the game's possible code name "ARMYOFTWOTFD" used on the site's tracking Javascript. That may be purely placeholder or simply code that's not indicative of the final name, but we like to think it is, if only to justify combing through Javascript with our work day.

Regardless, we're hoping that the Kotaku readership will generate winning backronyms on the "TFD" portion of the name, helping us wipe away our case of the Thursdays.

I'll start—Army of Two: Too Funky Dudes!! Yes, with the double exclamation point.

Army of Two [Official Site - thanks, Morgan!]

The publisher has invited local press to visit the offices of EA Montreal next Monday, then spill all embargoed beans on Thursday. Our best guess? It's an Army of Two sequel.

I mean, EA Games label president Frank Gibeau wasn't exactly vague about the prospect of a follow up to the co-op shooter, telling Variety last year that EA has a "sequel idea planned" for Army of Two. Plus, an Army of Two sequel was rumored to have been announced in February, then called off due to weather. No, seriously!

Of course, EA Montreal may be pulling the lid off another title, perhaps another SSX or even a completely new franchise. But if we had to bet, well, it wouldn't be on another Boogie.

EA Montreal Announcing Mystery Game On March 12 [Shacknews]

The idea of creating a fun, pick-up-and-play skater that uses the Wii Balance Board as a controller was sublime, I thought at the time. What game, besides maybe snowboarding, is a better fit for a balance board controller than a skating one? Then I got a chance to check it out at another event in Los Angeles. The controls were a bit tricky, but after playing around with them for a bit, I seemed to be getting the hang of it. Skate It quickly became one of my most anticipated Wii games for the holiday season. I needed something to do with that balance board tucked under the sofa and this seemed like the perfect fit.

But did the final product live up to my expectations, delivering a pick-up-and-play skating game that uses body motion to let you really drop into the experience? Lets see.

Loved
Flick It: One of the things I love about Skate It's controls are their use of the remote to pull off tricks. Using just the remote to play the game may not work, but when you combine the remote and the game's clever flick it controls with the nunchuk for precision, Skate It is quite fun.

Level Design: Skate It's level design is fairly eclectic, featuring an around-the-world selection of skate parks, city streets and disaster areas to skate around in. You can even clutter up marked off areas with your own bits and pieces, essentially creating mini skate parks.

Hated
Balance Board Controls: I had high, perhaps head-in-the-clouds high expectations for the balance board controls when I first tested them out in Skate It. They seemed pretty responsive, and I figured they would add a lot of depth to the game. But what the hell happened? What tested as deft and responsive, shipped as unwieldy and painfully awkward. Not only could I not pull off the tricks the game's campaign mode insists you finish to continue, but half the time the game throught I had jumped on the board or stepped off of it. To make matters worse it would stop the game to scold me and then pause to recalibrate.

Remote-Only Controls: After giving up on the fit board as controller part of the way through the tutorial, I moved on to remote-only controls. They're kinda neat. You hold the remote like it's a skateboard and tool around a park, flicking out to perform different tricks. The problem is, the controls for turning aren't responsive enough for a bulk of what you have to, or want to do in the game. And at times the same motions performed different tricks.

Radical Commentator: As soon as the game kicks off you're saddled with a buddy, a cameraman buddy. And man is he annoying. The fact that you're using unresponsive controls to pull off intricate tricks is frustrating enough, do I really need some asshat shouting out the same tired phrases at me every time I manage to break half of the bones in my body?

Wasteland Setting: There is no one in Skate It besides you. No pedestrians, no cops, no competitors. Even when there are people there ( you can hear their voices), they're not there. Even your wordy cameraman buddy who just won't shut up throughout the game is never anywhere to be seen. Skate It doesn't take place in a wasteland, apparently it takes place in the head of a schizophrenic. He's always hearing voices, but no one's ever there.

Horrible Camera Man: Not only is your cameraman annoying, talkative and invisible, he's also a really, really, really bad photographer and videographer. Would a close-up of my jeans-covered ass really make the cover of a skate magazine? Does the back of my head zipping down the line of a fence really make for good video? No, not even in a video game.

Pass The Remote Multiplayer: Not only are there no people in the single player campaign, the multiplayer campaign, an experience that by definition includes more than one person, is also bereft of other characters. Instead of going head-to-head in any of the challenges or modes with two remotes, you play pass the remote. It's almost like this was designed to be played on a single DS.

****ing Respawn Points: The only thing more frustrating than having to make a run over and over and over again because of sloppy controls, is respawning each time about two-feet from the curb, the drop, the stairs, the whatever you're supposed to jump or grind, making it impossible to get up enough speed to actually do it.

Cutting Corners: Why can't my skateboarder step off his board? Why instead does he have to spend time pushing straight into a wall or a corner until, eventually, the board slips out of the area it's stuck and he can continue moving?

To say I was deeply disappointed by this game would be an understatement. But, I'll be the first to admit that I had unreasonably high expectations both for what Skate It would do with the board, and (I'm starting to think) what the board itself is capable of delivering. Perhaps four digital scales coated in plastic just aren't meant to be able to measure precise shifts in weight. Maybe the balance board is something better suited to the sorts of games that it shipped with, titles that only need binary responses. Left, right. On, off. Forward, backward. It's probably too early to tell, but maybe after I check out the Shaun White sitting on my coffee table I'll know.

Taken on its own, Skate It isn't as bad a game as my hateds might lead you to believe. Two of the three control methods are flawed. But the remaining one can be quite fun. When you look at the game with just that control method in mind you're left with something that has it's moments mixed in with a healthy dose of shortcomings. But hey, at least it does have its moments.

Skate It was developed by EA Montreal and published by Electronic Arts, released in North America on Nov. 19 for the Wii. Retails for $49.99. Played through several countries in both campaign and free skate modes using all three control methods. Played all multiplayer modes with my son.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

The ambiguity of these private military corporations lends weight to an intelligent thriller with relevance to what's going on in the world right now. You have contractors with their own agendas, and two guys whose friendship supersedes all the politics. I told EA right off the bat I wasn't a gamer, and that appealed to them because they didn't want to simply replicate the game.'

Army of Two is a string of EA film deals that includes licensing Mass Effect to producer Avi Arad and a Sims movie at Fox. Mass Effect movie, that we can see. But Army of Two? Really?

Army of Two movie in the works at Universal, EA producing for the first time [The CutScene]

... he figures if Army Of Two causes some gamers to Google "private military contractors" or touches off debates about the role of mercenaries in real-world war zones, that's not such a bad thing.

"It's not the goal of the game (to educate people), because it's entertainment," Tascan said. "But if they learn a little bit more about it like we learned about it, it might open their eyes a little bit."

In addition to getting people's hackles up for content, Canada has attracted the wrath of European trade unions for offering supposedly unfair incentives to encourage studios to make the move. Oh, Canada.

Montreal firm Yanks some chains [Winnipeg Sun]

More good than bad, more blue than red, I still found Army of Two to be quite a mixed bag.

Loved:
* Aggro: The most aggressive person in your two-man team doesn't just attract attention, he glows red, allowing the non-dominant shooter to sneak around nearly invisible head butting people to death.
* Customized Weapons: Use money earned in missions to buy new weapons and add stocks, silencers, grenade launchers, shields. You can even pay to have them dipped in gold.
* Drag and Heal: When you or your partner go down the other can drag the injured player to safety and heal him. While being dragged, the injured player still gets to fire off his weapon at approaching foes.
* Coop Shield: Rip off a car door or find a riot shield and one player can carry it as portable cover while the other player gets cozy behind him to fire off his gun, forming a two-man, bullet-proof death machine. The shield holder can also use it to bash someone to death.
* The Parachute: There's not nearly enough of it, but on occasion you can drop into a level by parachute. One of you controls the drop while the other picks off enemies with a sniper rifle. It's great fun.
* Back to Back: At times in the game you can go back-to-back with your partner and orchestrate a ballet of death in slow-motion with temporarily powered up weapons. Unfortunately, you can't trigger these events, they only occur at set times in the campaign.

Hated
* Idiot AI: This is not a game intended to be played on your own. If you rely on an AI to be your partner expect him to get stuck, lost and occasionally to drag your bleeding carcass back and forth in front of machine-gun firing enemies for a few minutes before deciding where exactly to heal you.
* Online Coop: While playing the campaign online or off with a friend is fantastic fun, you can't just drop in. Instead you have to start off with a partner. A mortal sin for a game so coop-centric.
* Glitches: Call it an AI problem, call it a graphic problem, but games shouldn't allow half of your team to get stuck in the backdrop. At one point I needed to use a grenade to "free" my partner from a railing.

Army of Two brings so many new things to the table that it's almost possible to overlook the atrocious AI, almost. Fortunately, the campaign is a relatively short affair and online gaming, be it in coop or versus mode, promises to be quite a bit of fun. I've never been a fan of small team shooter match-ups, but Army of Two doesn't just make it work, it makes it sing.

Buy it for the chance to head butt your enemies to death in a custom mask, keep it because you're not going to want to give up on the ability to drag and heal, distract enemies with gunfire and use car doors to block bullets on the move.

Army of Two, developed by EA Montreal, published by EA, released March 5, for $60. Available on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, reviewed on Xbox 360, played to completion.

Want to see what Boogie looks like in motion? Press play. Want to know how it plays? Read the impressions. Any other questions you need answered? Ah, that would be "Martin Van Buren" and "ziggurat".

In case you haven't noticed, the girl in this clip is the same model in each shot of our Boogie gallery, which shows how varied the game's character customization is at this early stage. Smart move, EA. Smart move. Michael McWhertor

The game has two distinct modes of play, dancing and singing. The latter couldn't be more straightforward. It's karaoke. The interface (which appeared pre-pre-alpha) looked very familiar to anyone who has played SingStar or Karaoke Revolution and should perform capably in the tunes department.

Only one song was ready for play, The Commodores "Brick House", but other tracks populated the song list including "You're The One That I Want" from the movie Grease, KC & The Sunshine Band's "That's The Way I Like It" and The Pussycat Dolls' "Don't Cha." Yep, that's pretty much every song you'll never want to hear again.

One nice feature described to us by the Boogie dev team was the game's "vocal assist" which, optionally, will mix your own voice with the pre-recorded vocal track, making the tone-deaf a little more aurally palatable. EA staffers told us that while the game will ship with a packed-in microphone, the final design hasn't yet been decided.

Dancing mode looks like somewhat familiar territory for EA Montreal, taking the SSX Blur control scheme and mutating it for performing dance tricks. It's less Dance Dance Revolution than it is a trick-based rhythm title. Think DDX, with less focus on strict beats and more focus on personalized performances.

The controls are set up in a fashion that seems to be popular among EA designers, the nunchuk controller will see your left hand controlling specific body motions, including, oddly enough, modifying facial expressions with the analog stick. Rotating the nunchuk twists your head and spine with the Z button opening and closing your mouth. How that will affect your performance was unclear, but it appears that having your character "sing" in time to the vocal track will net you a better score.

The Wii remote performs your avatar's dance moves, which EA has turned into a series of tricks and stances. Motions with the remote will perform logical dance moves; moving the remote in an upward motion will make you jump; downward motions will perform squats and splits. Side-to-side motions will elicit side-to-side spins and shuffles. Twist the remote, do a hip twist. It makes sense, but that doesn't mean it's immediately intuitive or overly easy to coordinate. You can switch up these moves with the A button, for style changes, and the B button, which acts as a modifier. The cross pad is used to move your character across, up and down a 3-by-3 grid better known as the dance floor. In other words, no parking on that thing.

Frankly, I was put-off by the current control scheme. It seemed unusually complex for a game clearly targeted at the Wii's more casual audience. Like SSX Blur, I went into Boogie thinking the game would feature a simpler, more intuitive, possibly remote-only method, only to find myself stumbling through my dance routine. EA Montreal may intend for players to more slowly ramp up, to become more accustomed to the coupled waving, twisting and stick control, but jumping into the game with limited play time made me wish for Brick House to end early every time. Granted, the game is still very early and there's more than enough time for fine-tuning, but there's one more aspect to the controls left to consider.

You'll need to shuffle your Boog all over the danceable area to pick up tokens (used to buy new clothes, hairstyles, accessories), multipliers, as well as power-ups for your Idol Meter. The Idol Meter will fill up as you successfully pull off dance moves, on-beat, allowing you to pull of uber-tricks (in a dancing sense) with a series of Wii remote motions while holding down A+B. These were still not finalized for our playtest and will surely see some changes in their implementation.

One interesting feature of Boogie that will surely fit well with the Wii partying crowd is the game's video recording tool. Your dancing and singing performances can be saved to the Wii's internal storage for posterity and humiliation purposes. EA promises an editing "toy" that will let you change camera angles and add effects.

There's still a good deal of Boogie that is currently still unrevealed and unfinished. While the game's multiplayer capabilities elicited many "I can't talk about that yet" responses, it looks like two-player support will allow one dancer and one singer, or two dancers.

Boogie has promise, but I relayed my control concerns to the team who told me they're still early in development. The game has style and substance, and fans of SSX Blur will probably understand best the design philosophy behind Boogie, but how well it will ultimately play is still an uknown.

You can check out the game's visuals in five new shots in our gallery, or hold tight for video. Michael McWhertor