2OpGaming

Take Two has now officially released statement regarding the now underway hostile takeover attempt by Electronic Arts. In their statement, they urge shareholders to stead fast and do nothing for the time being.

New York, NY - March 13, 2008 -The Board of Directors of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO) today recommended that Take-Two stockholders take no action at this time in response to the announcement by Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) that it has made an unsolicited conditional tender offer to acquire all of Take-Two’s outstanding shares of common stock for $26 per share in cash.

Consistent with its fiduciary duties, and in consultation with its independent financial and legal advisors, Take-Two’s Board will review and consider EA’s offer, and within 10 business days, will advise Take-Two’s stockholders of the Board’s position regarding the offer as well as its reasons for that position.

Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers are acting as financial advisors to Take-Two and Proskauer Rose LLP is acting as legal advisor.

Army of Two is one of my newest favorite games. Army of Two Assistant Producer Matt Turner took some time out to answer some questions from 2Op regarding the new third person shooter from EA. I have been pimping this game everywhere and I definitely think it’s a game everybody who has an Xbox 360 or a PS3 has to check out. Those of who follow the site know, I just don’t say that about any game.

2Op: Army of Two was originally set for release last November. What has the development team focused on in the months since then in terms of improving the game?

Matt Turner: A lot of fine tuning. We really wanted to focus on polishing certain aspects of the game to make it a tighter experience. One of our goals during our extra time was to improve the through the gun experience and make the guns feel more powerful in the hands of the gamer. As well as that we worked on the health system, the lighting and a few other carefully selected issues.

2Op: What differences can a player look forward to when playing either Rios or Salem? Are there any specific skill sets one has the other does not?

Matt: The difference is in their personalities and looks but as far as ‘special abilities’ or performance there is no difference. Rios is bigger. He is your more classic military boy who follows orders and executes by the book. Salem on the other hand is a lippy little punk who takes stupid risks and acts before he thinks.

2Op: The game is obviously focused around cooperative play. However, some of us are loners. What can be said to this in terms of SP? Will the game be as enjoyable in SP as it is in co-op? What can be said about friendly AI in AO2?

Matt: The game is at its best when played with a partner. It’s a pure coop experience. But the PAI can be quite fun as well. We really wanted to try and create a PAI that behaved as much like a real player as possible. He can take care of himself or you can order him around but the orders you have are more loose parameters rather than precise orders.

2Op: The use of tampons to close a bullet wound feature was one that a lot of people in the community really looked forward to. What was behind the decision to remove it from the game?

Matt Turner: It was a great idea and we loved it. But we felt that the mini game not only grew tiresome after the 8th, 9th, 10th times doing it but it also really took the player out of the combat experience and broke the flow of the game. The system we replaced it with works much better in the game as an experience. It was too bad and we were sad to see it go but the game is better without it.

2Op: How long would you estimate the campaign should take?

Matt: For an experienced 3rd person shooter player between 6 and 8 hours.

2Op: If you are playing online co-op with a friend and they get dropped. Will the game automatically switch your partner to EA or will it end the session?

Matt: If it your partner gets dropped you can seamlessly switch over to the PAI and continue playing. Or you can quit out wait from your partner to come back and restart from you last checkpoint.

2Op: How will the save system work? Reading in a preview on IGN, it said the game would end if one of you dies. Will it revert back to a save point or will it be literally game over?

Matt: The game doesn’t ‘end’. You just get a ‘restart from checkpoint’ and that’s exactly what happens. You start again at the last checkpoint you crossed.

2Op: Are all the multiplayer modes going to be 2 on 2? The game has a nice set of multiplayer modes. What mode should a player jump into first? Why was that your answer?

Matt: All multiplayer is 2 vs. 2. I would suggest doing ‘Warzone’ first. It is a variety of all the modes and a beginner get a feel for them all and maybe which one they would like to specialize in if they so choose.

2Op: If you play through the game and like some of the missions to play with friends, will you be able to choose that mission?

Matt: Yes, as long as they have played it too. Once you have played through the game you can start any one of the six maps whenever you want.

2Op: There was a lot of information regarding vehicles a while back. However, most of that seems to have removed. Are there still vehicle missions in the campaign? Will there be any vehicles in the multiplayer portion of the game?

Matt: Yeah, we kept the hovercraft sequences in the campaign mode so look for those. But we also but some of the vehicles we cut into the multiplayer mode so you still get a chance to drive them around.

2Op: One of the achievements is “Retirement savings plan” which asks a player to earn a billion dollars in the multiplayer mode. That seems like quite an accomplishment. For crazy achievement junkies, how many games will that entail on average (I know everyone is of different skill).

Matt: A good team can easily earn 2 million bucks in a single vs. match. So you do the math.

2Op: What is the framerate of Army of Two? Will the game’s performance be even across platforms?

Matt: Performance is very good across both platforms.

2Op: If I look for one thing when I open Army of Two and start playing, what should that be?

Matt: The Air Guitar.

Thank you to Matt and Electronic Arts for hangin with 2Op and talking about Army of Two. Go check it out, it’s on store shelves right now.

In the future the armed forces are no longer controlled by governments, they’re controlled by private corporations. A lot of hype surrounded the game’s release last November before it was delayed. I spent the last few hours playing the campaign with an AI teammate as unfortunately pretty much nobody had the game tonight.

Visually AO2 is well done. It doesn’t do anything extremely well but it gets it done for a next gen title. The character models for Salem and Rios are very well detailed from body to face scratches. The masks the AO2 boys wear are pretty intimidating as well and there’s a ton of them to buy. The frame rate remains pretty constant as well throughout the experience. The environments themselves aren’t anything you haven’t already seen before but the locales never get boring visually. From the story, I can easily see why early reviews with the game toned up on language may have been a disaster about killing a-rabs because quite frankly, that is what the game is about. I have to admit seeing one of the characters watch 9/11 in one of the opening cut scenes for a mission headed for Afghanistan did feel awkward. That is much pretty the story line here. You’ll travel for terrorist hot bed to terrorist hot bed and kill. The enemies don’t vary much between assault rifle wielder, suicide bombers, and a few heavily armored enemies.

I am having a ton of fun with the game play of AO2. It’s far from perfect but it is something that at the least feels different even if it isn’t. The shooting mechanics are pretty nice and do not feel as stiff as they looked in some of the videos for this title. Although bear in mind, this is not CoD4 level accuracy of realism when it comes to gun play. It feels very much more like Mercenaries. The first few levels serve as the training ground and while these first levels are okay the action doesn’t really get intense until the 3rd and 4th levels Iraq and a mission where you have to over take a US aircraft carrier which is overrun by terrorists. Playing with the AI up to this point has been sufficient but I’ll be honest, at least the difficulty I played on the AI was pretty terrible and I did most of the work myself. If you have another human friend playing with you online I would definitely recommend starting at a higher difficulty or else the game may be way too easy. In the later levels when things intensify however the enemy AI does lack and you are out gunned and this became especially apparent on the carrier where there is little to no cover.

Enemy AI however actually managed to surprise me. It’s quite good and the enemy recognizes when and where to take cover and overall does one of the better jobs I have seen at making use of the environment in a game. The game’s squad based controls for two people are also very nicely done and easy to use. Tapping the direction key sends an order on what to do such as advance, hold position, or regroup. Double tapping the direction will also change between aggressive and passive modes which governs how much attention your teammate is going to draw. As many of you know there’s a balance between aggro and stealth that a tandem can use. Aggro is the amount of attention enemies pay to you. The more you have it the more you get shot at and the more likely it is you’re going to die. To counter balance that however, your partner becomes invisible to enemies for a short time while you are in aggro. The whole concept of the game is to draw fire and flank with your team mate. It’s a very simple premise, but a ton of fun and easily executed. When playing with the AI I let him be the bullet magnet while I stealthed my away around enemies for kills. It’s pretty satisfying to me and never got old coming around a group of enemies and unloading. One thing I must point out is that with the buying system of weapons which I will explain below there is no picking up of weapons even though during boss battles (of which there seem to be one terror leader per level) is using a special weapon. For example, the boss of the Somalia opening level was using the gold AK47 we have seen so much of. You work hard to kill him and you can’t pick up his gun. Enemies thankfully however do seem to drop ammo in droves. The cover system is a little buggy and uses the Y button solely to either slide up against cover or jump over it. Yes, that is the problem. Sometimes you’ll mean to be hopping into cover and instead will end up jumping over it. With experience though you do fix that problem.

AO2 does a good job as well of breaking up the monotony of running from scenario to scenario killing all the bad guys and moving on. Sometimes you will open a door and be surrounded by enemies which will trigger a back to back sequence in which a bullet time mode is turned on and you can just unload into a ton of enemies. There are also some portions where you will be parachuting into scenarios and from the ground enemies will fire rockets and sniper bullets at you and your lone defense is a sniper rifle while your buddy vehicles the parachute. These mechanics can be very Ace and Gary at times but they do work pretty well and are fun. The health and healing process is also pretty revolutionary and something I liked and seemed to fit the game. When you or your partner dies you must drag them to safety while still shooting at enemies. Once at safety you can press A to revive them. Wait too long to revive them or die yourself and it’s game over. This leads into another positive point for the game. The game auto saves in just the right places after the right battles so you’ll rarely die and have to go through a ton of fighting over again.

Another primary feature of the game is the fact you get money for completing objectives both main and side. With this money you are able to buy new weapons and armor at certain checkpoints throughout the game. You are taken to a screen where four very from the movie stereotypical people sell you guns. The African warlord sells assault rifles. The gangster from NYC sells handguns and uzis. The chinese guy with a glass eye sells “special weapons” such as an RPG. And last but certainly not least, a guy from Ukraine sells armor upgrades. It’s not the deepest gun customization in a game ever but I found myself previewing almost everything with the money I had earned to buy the perfect combo of damage and accuracy. For example I bought a C2 assault rifle, upgraded the magazine to a 60 bullet clip and added a group for added accuracy. Each gun has its own special set of customization and one thing I liked is that each gun lets you get a little arcadey with attributes but you can never make a rail gun for example with sniper rifle accuracy. Of course, if you have the extra cash laying around you can bling your weapons in gold or platinum depending on the weapon. I stared at the gold RPG launcher for a while but at a quarter mill decided to move on.

I know IGN gave this game a 7.9 and I have only played a few hours not touching the online co-op and multiplayer aspects yet. But I do feel this game is better than a 7.9 and definitely worth people at the least giving it a rent to play with their friends. It is a blast to play. The game knows what it is and tries not to take itself too seriously despite being a commandos versus terrorists 3rd person cover shooter. This is one of those sleeper games that should not be overlooked. 

Take Two currently has 73.5 million shares on the open market. If Electronic Arts wants to make good on their rhetoric about acquiring Take Two, now is the time. Don’t be surprised to see a like announcement before the day is over.   

Electronic Arts over the weekend made public their strategic 2 billion dollar all cash (cue Austin Powers sound effect) buyout offer of Take Two ahead of the Grand Theft Auto IV release. Take Two flat out rejected the deal as having under valued the stock. EA in response to this rejection appears to be appealing to the court of public opinion in setting up a website detailing the information of the buy out including an FAQ which answers some very interesting questions such as the following.

I know this would be a lot of sports gamer’s worst nightmare. I somehow doubt the team behind the 2K sports games would be left in tact. Although, I do have total confidence in EA’s new organization scheme something about this deal just doesn’t strike me as right. However, EA has cornered the Take Two shareholders which at this point may be understandbly willing to sell due to the stock’s poor performance over the last few years.