Kane & Lynch: Dead Men

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In all fairness, I really wanted to like this game. I gave it a fair shot and rented it out. After completing it, I've decided that Kane & Lynch had a lot of potential that got turned into a 16-level rehash of Michael Mann's bank robbery scene from the movie Heat.

The game description tells us:

"This is a violent and chaotic journey of two men a flawed mercenary and a medicated psychopath. Each hates the other but must work together to save themselves. Play Kane in single-player mode and either character in two-player co-op mode."

The reality is: Yes, two men who hate each other are teamed up but they should direct their hate towards the game control system. We can only change two buttons in the options screen, so if you don't like the layout of the controls, you've got to suck it up.

Passing a weapon to another character is not fluid holding the R3 button and using the D-Pad to choose a weapon is simply not possible in a heated firefight.

In single-player mode, Kane shows up to the left of the screen, not centered, as one would expect. If you play as Lynch (which can only be done in co-op mode), he's on the right side of the screen.

It's usually standard for games to offer playability as either of the protagonists, but that wasn't done here.

The game description tells us:

"Violence Erupts in Meticulously Created Safe Worlds: Realistic and responsive environments and crowds react when events get of out control. Manipulate the environments and crowds strategically to complete objectives."

The reality is: Yes, if you fire a bullet in a crowded dance hall, the characters start screaming like an 8-year-old girl who saw Michael Jackson in 1983. However, the crowd movement is totally inaccurate. Everyone is able to make it outside but mysteriously, no patrons are trampled to death, as one would expect.

I don't know what it means to use the crowds to complete objectives, as the crowds in this game act like medicated sheep that don't react to much other than gunfire.

The game description tells us:

"Wide Variety of Intense 3rd Person Game Play: Rappel from buildings, firing on the run or from moving vehicles, launch surprise attacks, lay down cover fire, and shoot blind from around corners, hurl smoke, tear, and incendiary grenades."

The reality is: You can do all these things, and the variety of weapons is impressive. However, Lynch usually starts every level with the shotgun as his primary weapon. In a game where most of your adversaries are firing from afar with rifles, Lynch's shotgun is virtually useless. Sure, you can change the weapon out with a better one, but why is the crappy weapon always the default?

Also, the camera angles in single-player mode are agonizing. Since the camera has Kane left of center, if you're behind an object and try to do a close-up aim on Kane's enemies, you'll get a screen full of Kane's bald spot instead. It doesn't help that the targeting reticule is the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

The game description tells us:

"Fast and Intuitive Combat: Lead a crew of criminal mercenaries to increase your chance of survival. You can also fight alone, you will automatically draw fire, throw grenades, lay down cover, and engage in close combat with their own signature moves."

The reality is: The description doesn't mention that the criminal mercenaries have no survival instincts whatsoever. If you don't keep them on a tight leash, they'll walk right into a heated firefight and try to stop their enemies with a devious trick: jumping in front of the bullets they shoot.

You will typically do most of the work yourself, while the mercenaries pick off the leftovers. As far as signature moves, once you've seen Kane break someone's neck for the 79th time, it gets boring.

The game description tells us:

"Two-player Co-operative Game Play: Team up and play the full story with a friend as either Kane or Lynch. At any point in the game you can choose to play the next, or previous, levels in co-op. Innovative Multi-player Levels: Up to 8 players."

The reality is: I don't see what they mean by playing the full story in co-op mode the only real difference between single player and co-op mode is seeing some events from Lynch's perspective, which we can already deduce from Kane's reactions in single player mode.

Playing previous levels or present levels is a standard feature, so there's nothing innovative here.

I haven't come across 8 players who want to tackle Kane & Lynch, let alone 8 people who want to play it at the same time.

Kane & Lynch is entertaining for a little bit, but the gameplay degenerates quickly into a repeating loop of showing a major gunfight then another then another and then another. Excessive gunfights and generous heapings of cursing can't save this game. I wouldn't recommend Kane & Lynch for anything other than a rental.

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I was really excited when I first heard about this game. It was made by the guys over at IOI (Hitman series), and they have never let me down . . . until now. The trailers and hype make it seem like this is a high-budget game, but the actual gameplay comes out incredibly short:

The sounds and environment are bland, so there is really no sense of urgency or intensity. The cutscenes are choppy and lackluster and they don't add to the "action-movie" style that this game could have achieved.

The graphics are incredibly poor for a game of its time. I shot a window, and it cracked. The next time I shot it, the entire window just disappeared. And this wasn't because of a glitch, the animation is just that underdeveloped. When I died, my teammates came up and their big blocky arms went through me when they adminsitered the adrenaline shot. This game really looks like an early PS2 game at best . . .

The gameplay is the most underdeveloed part of the game. Hit detection sucks, and even though it claims to have a cover-system, it also sucks. In fact, there is no cover button even. Walk up to a wall and jiggle the joystick around and hope that your character will eventually take cover. It really is annoying. Your character constantly pops in and out of cover whether you want him to or not.

Stay away from this game. I really wanted to like it, but I had to return it after about an hour and a half of play. With game prices as high as they are, you'd expect to have some half-decent quality delivered. Kane & Lynch fails. If you really have to play this game, rent it and you'll be happy you read this review.

This game had everything going for it: a quality developer, a quality storyline, and very capable next-gen systems to support it. However, laziness and greed on the developers' part totally ruined everything this game could have been.

Buy Kane & Lynch: Dead Men Now

First lets start with what is wrong. Yeah the game play is a little laggy, I personally hate the controls, and I thought the story play was totally unbelievable. One second your in a prison, then to a bank, then to amazon rain forest. Seriously?! The aiming is messy, and I found the zoom on most weapons to be sub-par. I also personally had trouble aiming while in cover, or getting into cover for the matter as well. But I do love this genre of game. So onward -

I played most of this game on the split screen co-op mode, on Aspirin setting. I found it a little hard in some parts.

But its not all bad, here is what I really liked about the game. First off, its violent, and the cursing is fine with me. But What I really liked which I found to be unique to this game was when you play on co-op Lynch and Kane sometimes have different missions to complete on story mode, they can't help each other, and if one dies the mission is over. I thought that was pretty unique and cool. I also like that the game has two endings, based on what Lynch picks. Sure, maybe the game was slightly a let down, OK fine I'll give you that. But at the same time, I still think it's a decent game.

Read Best Reviews of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men Here

Postives

The game is fun

Some missions are long

Easy to like characters

15Missions

Negatives

Can be killed easy

Most weapones have bad accuracy

A ruthless mercenary A medicated psychopath an alliance in hell Kane and Lynch in an epic drama offering volatile single and co-op explosive crew-based combat and a treaerous multiplayer experience vicious and visoeral it's the new breed of hard edged criminal action

Want Kane & Lynch: Dead Men Discount?

Kane and Lynch is a co-op based third person shooter. The game's dark storyline and interesting characters and character development add personality to an otherwise lackluster shooter.

The game can be thought of as a combination between a third-person shooter and a squad game. Playing the game involves a lot of use of cover and blind shooting, similar to Gears of War. You can aim more carefully, which zooms your view in (there's no first-person mode, though). However, the controls are kind of awkward as a whole; moving into cover is haphazard, as you'll only "take cover" by standing next to an object that can provide cover, and there's no visible indicators or buttons to press to actively try and take cover. Shooting is equally questionable; despite their highly visible bullet trails, none of the guns really feel that solid, and none are particularly accurate. Even when you're zoomed in, shooting is pretty much a random exercise where you spray as many bullets as you can at a target and hope you hit them. The bullet spread is really unrealistic and almost all the bullets go completely off course.

In most cases, there are only two characters, the titular Kane (the first player) and Lynch (the second player, or AI-controlled in single-player mode), but in some missions you will receive extra subordinates. Your subordinates are controlled with a simple "Attack/Move/Follow Me" command setup similar to many squad-based action shooters. However, they never seem to do much, really; sure, they're each an extra gun firing at your enemies, but their contributions never seem particularly significant. If one of your allies is downed, you must go to them and administer adrenaline before they die; if you yourself are downed, an ally will try to get over to you and administer adrenaline to you. However, the latter seemed to be about a 50/50 chance of them actually reaching you in time, so it really just seemed easier to load a checkpoint.

Multiplayer only has one mode, but it's at least fairly imaginative all the players must try to escape from the (AI-controlled) police after a bank heist. It's not a simple matter of cooperating, as players can kill each other to take their victim's share of the money, but by doing so they become a juicier target themselves. The interaction between players and the combination of paranoia and necessary teamwork is at least a nice effort to separate the game from traditional deathmatches.

The graphics are okay, but not cutting edge. In cutscenes, they look okay, but once the game is actually going the motions and animations change from being reasonably natural to being awkward and jerky. The most annoying thing is the bullet trails mentioned earlier, which make the game feel silly and unrealistic and detract from the serious atmosphere that it's trying to promote. The sound is pretty good, but not noteworthy except for the voice acting, which is done well.

The best part of the game, hands down, is the characterization, the acting, and the plot. All of those are done well, and this game would make a great movie. Unfortunately, the gameplay and the graphics drag its actual value as a "game" down, and all-in-all it's not that fun to play.

6/10