games: Kane and Lynch: Dead Men

Today we are going to take an unbiased look at Kane & Lynch: Dead Men a messed up bit of third person ultra violence.

Let’s start with the plot. You play as Kane, an ex-mercenary on death row, who is busted out by fellow inmate Lynch, a medicated schizophrenic who gets a little murderous when his control slips. Lynch is to guard Kane who is sent on a mission by some other bad guys who have kidnapped his wife and daughter. This is a great premise and refreshingly different to a lot of the big titles out there at the moment. The characters, while not pleasant are quite interesting, and I love it when Lynch does his crazy shit in the single payer campaign. The plot isn’t bad and the script is also generally well written, although you do wonder if any of these guys kiss their mothers with those mouths…

But cool ideas are not always enough to hold a game afloat in the turbulent sea of consumer opinion, and unfortunately this game has a number of flaws.

First up there are some issues with presentation. While the voice acting and music are really very good, the visuals are disappointing. They are clearly going for a gritty feel, and again it’s nice to see a different style being used, but everything looks so intangible and lacking in weight. Much of the movement is horrible, not to mention quite a lot of clipping and bugs like being revived by having adrenaline injected into your backpack if you happen to die face down. There are technologically impressive things such as the crowded night club scene, and the character of the locations is pretty accurate, but you wish they would have held off release until they could have made it look a bit more polished.

Then there are some serious problems with the mechanics. The cover system is annoyingly twitchy: you run up to cover and sometimes it will pull you in, sometimes you will stand there like a pillock, soaking up fire desperately trying to make your desire to get into cover register with the infernal machine. The accuracy isn’t great, particularly with automatic weapons and at range, and movement feels incredibly cumbersome, particularly with the default control options, although whacking the aim speed all the way up helps a little with this.

While the simple squad command system is pretty good, allowing you to choose targets for your partners to attack or locations for them to head for, the AI isn’t great. Even occasionally Lynch will forget to take cover or need to be reminded to return fire. Similarly your opponents aren’t always the most challenging, they’re not great shots on the normal difficulty setting and often wait in the open for you to come within a certain distance before they start firing, I’ve also seen a cop shooting directly at a pillar because I’d been behind it. although I guess your poor accuracy balances all this out!

As for the multiplayer there’s good and bad. No online co-op is a real pity and offline co-op is in split screen so a bit crappy if you have a smaller TV. But the online multiplayer game Fragile Alliance is pretty interesting, and again props for not just going with the standard modes.

You and your buddies will go on heists and if successful will split the loot. The twist is, you can choose to turn traitor at any time, killing your partners and keeping the loot for yourself. But opening yourself up for retaliation and exposing yourself more on the map. If you die you come back as a cop for that round. This is a neat and pretty fun idea, but the mechanics issues of the campaign game are still prevalent here. Oh, and the PS3 version doesn’t support online chatter.

So in conclusion, some great ideas and some nice little touches like the dialogue you get over load screens, but a lot of mechanical issues which drag the experience down. This shows a lot of potential but still needs work.

Now to the stars: are Eidos listening? well then it’s 5 stars! only kidding, a respectable but not great, 3 stars.

For the best of the rest:

Game Spot:
Interactive is best known for its stealth-focused Hitman series, but there’s nothing quiet and sneaky about its latest release, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. This time around, the developer put together a crime-themed shooter that starts out with a couple of simple, heist-like objectives and then rapidly spins out of control until, without much warning, you’re gunning down soldiers in the middle of a foreign revolution. While the journey sounds interesting at first, and has a few bright points, it’s weighed down by bad storytelling, a real lack of character development, and a host of gameplay-related issues. The end result is a game that squanders much of its potential and just doesn’t come together as well as it probably should have.

IGN:
Kane & Lynch may have one of the most unfortunate titles in the history of games. Although the name may inspire thoughts of racial injustice, IO Interactive’s spiritual successor to Freedom Fighters and follow up to Hitman: Blood Money has nothing to do with race relations. Even so, it will manage to raise an eyebrow or two with its visceral story and characters that almost save the title from its clunky gameplay. 


Meta Critic:
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is a dark and gritty drama featuring two men, one is a flawed mercenary and the other a medicated psychopath. Forced together on a violent and chaotic path of redemption and revenge, no action is considered too harsh as this volatile partnership is pushed beyond reason in this brutally realistic, character-driven third person action shooter. [Eidos Interactive]