Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
With all of the bad press surrounding Kane & Lynch and Eidos lately, I was completely prepared to hate this game. Imagine my surprise when the game was actually pretty fun. It was definitely rushed out and it shows in several areas, but the basic gameplay is a good shooter.
First off, you play as a bad guy. Not a funny bad guy like in Grand Theft Auto. Not a bad guy with greater cause like in Assassin’s Creed. You are a very bad person that does completely bad things for mostly bad reasons. Everyone you come across hates you. If they don’t at first, they will by the end of the game (well, that or they will be dead). This may turn off many gamers because it is difficult to relate to the characters. The story is good with a few twists and turns that help keep it interesting. There is a scene in the middle that tries to be shocking, but it was a near duplicate of a scene from The Darkness (which is an awesome example of a game where you play a bad guy that you can’t help but like). The ending on the other hand, just sucks. The final cutscene is about ten seconds long and just finishes making you hate your character. The final mission tries to imply that there are two possible endings, but I have played the last level three times and can’t for the life of me figure out if there actually is a second one. It is also fairly short; another game that can be finished in around five hours.
The next person that complains to me about how terrible the guns are in this game, I will personally pay to have them spend the day at a gun range (no, not really). There is a big difference between where you think you are pointing a gun and where the bullets actually go. Gamers have come to expect perfect accuracy and any game that tries to go for a more real life feel gets ridiculed. I loved the game for being realistic and thought it made the gun battles more intense. Pistols aren’t a last resort weapon like in other games. If you need to try and pick a guy off at a distance, they are your best bet.
Another thing the game is wrongfully insulted for is the cover system. Most people have said that it basically doesn’t work at all. With a little practice, I found that it works exactly the way it was supposed to. The problem is that it isn’t explained very well. If you face directly at a wall near a corner and let go of the joystick, your character will automatically snap to the wall. Occasionally, I got stuck to a wall that I didn’t intend to but it never got me into trouble so it wasn’t too frustrating when it happened.
The boss battles are either ridiculously easy or quite difficult. One battle has you fighting a gigantic dump truck. Your character says that you need to shoot the driver who barely exposes himself. After dying numerous times, I found out that you don’t actually have to hit the driver. All you need to do is break the windshield of the truck, which for some reason takes about four complete clips of ammo to shatter and causes the entire truck to shut down. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the final boss fight. I defeated him three different times and twice I was able to win without him firing a shot. Luckily, the sequence leading up to the fight was rather intense. One thing I have to say for the game is that it is constantly building toward the end. Many other games have there best levels very early on, but this one gets better further in.
One thing that really hurts the game is the moronic AI. Quite often, an enemy didn’t react to his ally next to him being shot. Other times, enemies would run in a straight line through a bottle neck while you unload on them with an automatic weapon, killing all of them before one fires a shot. These things didn’t hurt the game too much and they aren’t anything I haven’t seen in a hundred other games (but that doesn’t make them any more forgivable). The AI problems that really hurt the game apply to your teammates. The do actually kill more guys than in other games, but they perform more stupid maneuvers also. The worst was when they run up behind you and start shooting at the same enemy you are, usually killing you. Most of the time, it will be so fast that you won’t have any idea what happened until the camera spins over your dead body and you see your ally standing behind you, still shooting over top of you. They also like to run out in the open an get gunned down. The problem is that you have to run up and save them in a set amount of time or you fail the level. During the more dangerous areas, I usually ordered my group to stay behind while I went ahead and killed everyone. This successfully destroyed the ’squad based’ part of this squad based shooter.
The graphics show, more than any other part, how rushed the game was. The levels are very bland and the textures are not detailed at all. Shadows don’t appear for objects until you are about ten feet away, which gives the game a very cartoony look. Transition animations are terrible. For example, in the second level your character picks up several guns during an in game cutscene. When he touches each gun, it disappears for a second and reappears in his hand. These are the types of problems that are fixed in the last month or so of development, so you can tell the game was rushed. Most of the levels are passable, but one annoyed the hell out of me. It was in a dance club where you start in the owners office and must fight your way out. During your escape, you must fall through a window and end up back in the same office, which leads to you fighting your way back out along an almost identical path. That is just lazy level design. Also, co-op being split screen only with no online option is completely stupid in this day and age.
The game is a fairly well done shooter that is hampered by poor graphics and bad AI. The story is good, but you will be hard pressed to like your own character. If you go in only expecting a fun shooting game and are prepared for the games faults and short length, you will enjoy it.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Instead of getting in the helicopter with Jenny at the end, go back up towards the plane and there’s a bridge behind it that lets you go back to the burning village to save your men. It’s a whole other level, and I suspect there’s two alternative endings within that (though I only managed one as this dude pops up everytime on the pier like 2 secs before the game ends and shoots – and I’m sure there’s a way to stop it but I couldn’t after like 5 tries).