Army of Two: The 40th Day dropped Salem and Rios into a Shanghai under siege, and Tyler Bates delivered a score that's considerably more cinematic and textured than the first game's bro-shooter reputation might suggest. Bates, known for his work on 300 and Guardians of the Galaxy, brings real film scoring chops to the table.
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"Introduction" sets up the disaster scenario with an ominous build, and from there the score rarely lets up -- "Highrise" and "Descent" capture the vertigo of navigating collapsing skyscrapers with real urgency. "Bossa China (Interlude)" is the album's most unexpected moment -- a bossa nova-flavored breather nestled between action cues, reflecting the game's Shanghai setting with a playful cross-cultural twist.
It's the kind of track that shows a composer having fun with the assignment rather than just churning out generic military tension. "Zoo" and "Cages" form a natural pair that accompanies one of the game's more memorable sequences, while "Can Your Contact Hear Me" drips with paranoid atmosphere.
The back half of the soundtrack builds toward the game's climactic moral choices with increasing intensity. "Hospital Streets" is grim and tense, "Auditorium" opens up into something more sweeping, and "Breznev" brings the heavy artillery for the final confrontations.
"Back to Back" -- a title that's essentially the whole thesis of the Army of Two franchise -- provides the emotional peak before "Bund" closes things out along Shanghai's famous waterfront. It's a genuinely solid action score that deserved a better game to be attached to.