02Aug 2012

EA announces Visceral's Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel

Dead Space developer leading franchise revamp, out March 2013

EA has announced Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel, a third helping of bulging, manly, co-op action due for Xbox 360 in March 2013.

It's in development at Dead Space developer Visceral, and introduces a "more intense, mature and grittier tone". The new stars are Alpha and Bravo, employees of paramilitary outfit Tactical Worldwide Operations who find themselves caught in a Mexican drug war.

The Devil's Cartel runs on DICE's Frostbite 2 engine, and offers splitscreen co-op plus new character customisation options.

"We wanted to refresh the Army of Two franchise for a new generation of action gamers, and at the same time, stay true to the core concept that really made the first two games fan favourites," noted Visceral's executive producer Julian Beak.

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"With meaningful, seamless co-op gameplay at its core and explosive new tag-team features, gamers will have to work together tactically and strategically as they push through a city dominated by one of Mexico's deadliest drug cartels."

Visceral's general manager Steve Papoutsis added: "Our goal with Army of Two The Devil's Cartel is to apply our key design principles - immersive, challenging gameplay, intense narrative and focus on quality - to help improve a franchise we feel has always had a lot of potential."

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Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

Comments

7 comments so far...

  1. golliwoza on 2 Aug '12 said:
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    This may be the only game I am currently interested in from EA. I loved the first two games but the second game needed more guns, and the first should not have given you all the guns if you had finished the game. My main enjoyment was buying and customising guns, have I said guns too much? Frostbite sounds nice and please give me back my Minigun. Gun. :oops:

  2. Lancer Armstrong on 2 Aug '12 said:
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    Wait a sec. What happened to Army of Four?

    I thought the next sequel was called Army of Four and featured four-player co-op?

    Another Army of Two just sounds dull.

  3. Baryonyx on 2 Aug '12 said:
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    Enjoyed the first game and loved the second. I wonder what new direction the series will take now. 40th Day was so explosive in terms of scope and set pieces. I didn't think they would be able to top that effort so the series would need to take a low-key direction for the third instalment. Hopefully they will expand on the best parts of the second game. I am hoping for:

    1) branching stories and morality decisions that actually have an impact. I loved the fact that the consequences of the choices you made in the second game would be shown to you at the point of making the choice in a Run Lola Run style.

    2) More guns, more customisation - what it says on the tin. And with suitable balancing so your weapon of choice remains competitive.

    3) Keep the great level design. Using the Aggro system to flank enemies was very enjoyable and gave things a bit more of an interesting slant than merely a GoW style 'pop up, duck and repeat' style of shooting.

  4. CunningSmile on 3 Aug '12 said:
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    This may be the only game I am currently interested in from EA. I loved the first two games but the second game needed more guns, and the first should not have given you all the guns if you had finished the game. My main enjoyment was buying and customising guns, have I said guns too much? Frostbite sounds nice and please give me back my Minigun. Gun. :oops:

    You do realise how much that post made you sound like a nutjob survivalist sitting in a shack polishing your guns and waiting for the Rapture? :lol:

    Not that I'm complaining about a perfectly valid lifestyle choice, because you should never take the piss out of heavily armed people in shacks.

    And agree with Lance, is this the same game as the rumoured Army of 4?

  5. golliwoza on 3 Aug '12 said:
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    You do realise how much that post made you sound like a nutjob survivalist sitting in a shack polishing your guns and waiting for the Rapture? :lol:

    Not that I'm complaining about a perfectly valid lifestyle choice, because you should never take the piss out of heavily armed people in shacks.

    And agree with Lance, is this the same game as the rumoured Army of 4?

    From a link a friend gave me yesterday I read that it took on two new characters and it was going to remain just the two player co-op. Which I can understand if you wanted to play solo, 3 boneheaded AI's are not going to help. I can PM it if interested.

    Edit: There is a trailer out which gives a bit of info too.

  6. CunningSmile on 3 Aug '12 said:
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    From a link a friend gave me yesterday I read that it took on two new characters and it was going to remain just the two player co-op. Which I can understand if you wanted to play solo, 3 boneheaded AI's are not going to help. I can PM it if interested.

    Edit: There is a trailer out which gives a bit of info too.

    Thanks for the offer but I'll take your word for it. Agree with you as well, no matter how good the AI three bots can be a pain. They are either useless (L4D) or so over powered they make the game boringly easy (Gears 3) so sticking with just Army of 2 is probably good news.

  7. matteehr on 3 Aug '12 said:
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    Wait a sec. What happened to Army of Four?

    I thought the next sequel was called Army of Four and featured four-player co-op?

    Another Army of Two just sounds dull.


    You sure you're not thinking of the Gearbox game Furious Four or whatever it's called? I think it was Gearbox anyway