Ah, Salem and Rios. You came into our lives like a broken WWE tag-team partnership, swearing like troopers, touching each other at every turn and whooping as if you’d just won the Super Bowl. The original Army Of Two represented EA Montreal’s attempts at designing a pure, two-player co-operative experience – and in many ways it succeeded. The central idea of you and a friend taking on the world was a compelling one, and for many, the notion of working with said chum (or AI, for the socially inept), either via split-screen or online, tapped into hazy, nostalgia-drenched recollections of Eighties buddy-cop movies.

Tango & Cash aside, however, the resulting game was a mixed bag, left lacking in a number of areas; teamwork often meant you and your partner helping each over a wall, weapons and blind firing were somewhat over-powerful, undoing the thought process behind the ‘aggro’ flanking system, and some gamers would argue the action and environments got a tad repetitive as the campaign wore on. It was the testosterone-fuelled protagonists themselves that divided opinion the most, however. Salem and Rios were – how shall we put it – far from politically correct, in a kind of ironic and faintly homoerotic way. Apparently, we Europeans were among those that found it all a bit much, but on our trip to see the sequel over at EA Montreal, the development team made it clear that feedback from the first game has been invaluable in helping to shape The 40th Day.

Of course the fundamental concept of a co-op third-person shooter featuring two muscle-bound mercenaries remains, and for those that actually found the banter in the first game refreshing, some of those elements will remain. The first thing to note is the sequel’s new visual style, which depicts our lead pair in a colourful Shanghai as the city turns into a disaster zone. Rather than just wisecracking and fist-bumping their way through the action, Salem and Rios will find their personalities significantly shaped by gamers’ actions this time round.

An early level set amid a block of Shanghai skyscrapers also introduces one of the sequel's new concepts – the couch debate. Moral decisions, or ‘co-op choices’ as the game's producers called them, enable you to approach scenarios in multiple ways. Your approach may be good, bad, easy or difficult, and you may or may not be rewarded for a particular course of action making for a far from black-and-white gaming world. With such a range of options the designers hope to get you and your real-life co-op partner to talk through your course of action (hence the term ‘couch debate’) before executing. Of course, it could also turn into a couch argument should one of you jump the gun.

From the off we were faced with one of the game’s numerous hostage situations – you can run in all guns blazing indiscriminately shooting bad guys and prisoners alike, or co-ordinate a more considered attack, taking the enemy leader hostage and causing his men to drop their weapons, while your partner goes around incapacitating them one-by-one. Such tactics can often prevent a perk, such as a new weapon, from being locked away out of sight, but these decisive moments often carry no incentive, regardless of whether you choose the ethical or morally suspect route. EA Montreal told us that the co-op choices will be varied enough to discourage players from lazily employing the same tactics every time, and hinted at one scenario involving a defenceless animal which promises to tug at the heart-strings.

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