Electronic Arts refuses to give up on old IPs – Video Games Feature
Electronic Arts (EA) has announced that the third person cover based shooter series Army of Two is getting a third game and the next title will be called Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel.
The original Army of Two (AOT) was a console exclusive third person cover based shooter developed by EA Montreal and released for only the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 in 2008. This game was EA’s answer to Epic Game’s Xbox 360 exclusive Gears of Wars with
some elements thrown in from Activision’s Call of Duty. EA was hoping that it would kill two birds with one stone and capture a lot of market share.
That however did not turn out to be the case as the game was met with a mediocre reception at launch. The reviews were average at best and gamers thought that AOT was a major case of ‘been there, done that’ and didn’t bring anything fresh and original to
the table. The game has an average rating of 74 percent for the PlayStation 3 version on Metacritic. Sales were decent but below expectations as the title sold just over 2.69 million units across both consoles.
EA was not satisfied and decided to push the intellectual property (IP) again with a sequel titled Army of Two – The 40th Day (AOT2), released in 2010, which sadly fared even worse than the original in the market despite getting similar reviews
to those of the first one. The second game only managed to sell around 1.52 million copies.
It appears that EA has decided to flog the dead horse yet again as it sets to release the third game in the series but this time the publisher is confident that things are going to be different as the game will bring many changes to the franchise. But this
time there is a different developer at the helm. AOT2 is being developed by Visceral Games, the developer behind the successful Dead Space 2.
The other major change is the decision to use Frostbite 2 engine. EA has probably invested a lot in developing the next generation engine and it shows. So it’s a natural assumption that the publisher will be using the new tech in pretty much every upcoming
game since it’s one of the best looking engines around so far.
“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, 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,” stated the executive producer of Visceral Games, Julian Beak.
Visceral Games claims that even though gamers might be skeptical about the change in developers and might think that EA has only ‘slapped on’ the Visceral Games logo on the IP because of the success of Dead Space 2 but the developer is confident that the
game will not disappoint and will set new standards for third person cover based shooters.
The game is expected to be released sometime in March 2013, avoiding the over-crowded holiday season, for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation3.
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