Army of Two: The 40th Day Weapons Customization Hands-On

While we’ve played the sequel to Army of Two plenty of times, today we got our first taste of how EA Montreal has iterate upon the weapons customization in The 40th Day.

When the entirety of the Army of Two: The 40th Day weapons arsenal is unlocked for you via a developer cheat code, the breadth of the customization can be overwhelming. Popping up the customization menu—done by holding the Y button on an Xbox 360 controller—presented us with plenty of options.

Most of what we toyed around with was stuff we’d seen—hands-off—at our last Army of Two: The 40th Day preview. There are new stocks, suppressors, frontmounts and more, letting the player create Frankenstein-esque fantasy weapons.

They can also be customized unusually, with oversized shields applied to AK-47s which can then be given a zebra stripe or desert camo paintjob, courtesy of the “pimp” option. Hearts, four-leaf clovers and giraffe prints ensure that no texture, no matter how violent and serious the game may be, is considered inappropriate.

Army of Two: The 40th Day’s weapon customization is pretty straightforward stuff. There’s an easily navigable menu system that quickly loads, offering simple to digest attributes for easy upgrades, letting the player know just how each add-on affects one’s aggro, damage and precision.

We tested out our new zebra-print weapons against a few of the game’s enemies—including the well armored Heavy Shotgun mini-boss—but didn’t get to properly take advantage of the new screwdriver bayonet or the shield frontmount. Maybe next time.

The rest of Army of Two: The 40th Day played as well as it ever had, especially since we got to take better advantage of the co-op playbook and experience how well our A.I. controlled partner performed—admirably, for the record. Hopefully, we’ll have more time with the new Army of Two during TGS this week.