What Happened to Army of Two?
by Team Respawn · ~5 min read
Retro commentary on EA’s Army of Two trilogy (PS3 / Xbox 360): a co-op–centric third-person cover shooter built around shared tactics and an aggro system, compared in spirit to games like Gears of War and Spec Ops: The Line. The series is distinctive for its era — but today it’s dormant and hard to access.
Core idea: co-op and aggro
- Two-player focus — human + human preferred, or human + AI; missions assume a pair.
- Aggro as a coordinated mechanic: one player draws enemy fire and attention so the partner can flank or set up different attacks — not framed as revolutionary in the video, but as a clear twist on standard shooting loops.
The three releases (timeline and reception)
| Title | Release | Notes from the video |
|---|---|---|
| Army of Two | March 2008 | EA Montreal; reviews described as roughly 7–10; sold well enough that a sequel was greenlit quickly. |
| Army of Two: The 40th Day | January 2010 | EA Montreal; similar review band to the first. |
| Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel | March 2013 | Called the final entry to date; reviews in the 4–5 / 10 range, weak sales. Criticism emphasized bad AI (allies and enemies), a generic feel, and little evolution from earlier entries. |
The speaker contrasts the trilogy’s three games in five years on one console generation with modern multi-year development cycles — examples from the video include Halo, Batman, Gears of War, and Assassin’s Creed taking longer or pausing yearly releases — suggesting EA may have burned through the concept quickly relative to how franchises are paced now.
Why it’s “nowhere” today
- No active continuation since The Devil’s Cartel (as of the video’s framing).
- Preservation / access
- Only the first Army of Two is called out as backwards compatible on Xbox One / Series X|S.
- No PC release mentioned as available to the speaker’s knowledge.
- Online services tied to old infrastructure (e.g. GameSpy) are described as shut down, complicating co-op outside local play.
- Practical co-op today is portrayed as mostly same-room split-screen on original Xbox 360 hardware, unless some unknown port or mod exists.
- The 40th Day and The Devil’s Cartel are noted as digitally purchasable on the Xbox 360 marketplace but not backwards compatible — so copies are stranded on 360 if you’re not using that hardware.
Design legacy
Co-op-first design is compared favorably to later successes built on strong two-player experiences — e.g. EA’s It Takes Two, and Borderlands for co-op spin — even while acknowledging weaker story in some of those examples. The hook the video highlights: friends + story + a mechanical twist (aggro) as a template players still respond to.
Could it come back?
A remaster or trilogy re-release is suggested as a low-risk way to test appetite after long dormancy, with Crysis trilogy remasters cited as a rough parallel — same rough era, dormant series, remaster leading to renewed interest and rumored or new follow-ups.
Closing tone in the episode: hope for a return but low expectations; the retrospective still values what made the series different for its generation. Watch the Team Respawn video above for the full discussion.
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