Customer Reviews

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Man, this game is frustrating. Not because it isn't fun (because it is), but because of missed opportunities. I am a big Michael Mann fan, and as far as story/visuals go, this game delivers. Unfortunately for me, technical issues and sometimes frustrating AI ruined the overall experience.

I cannot play this game without a crash. It crashes and I see the 'send a report to MS' window. Fortunately I can alt-tab back into the game and play unhindered. I recently did a full Windows format and reinstall and still receive the error, so unless it's a random configuration problem with my machine...also, Eidos Support has no idea what is wrong and tells me to replace the media. Well, others in the official and unofficial forums have the exact same issue, and we can't figure out any commonalities. I also receive random crashes to desktop on level loading.

As far as AI, sometimes they find cover and sometimes they do not. In my experience they rarely act smart, merely adequate at best. Many times I will order someone behind cover only to see them sit NEXT to the cover out in the open. They die very quickly. And this is on medium difficulty. I don't remember having this much frustration with the AI in Freedom Fighters. No, this AI definitely needs tweaking, but it's close to what it needs to be. As it stands, seeing the AI stand out in the open while they get shot ruins the immersion.

I really wanted to love this game. Although some are bashing the graphics, I think the graphical style overall is very good. It has a gritty, hazy style that I feel fits perfectly with the overall mood and I think the textures look great. Is it as beautiful as Crysis? No, but it's still very good. The aiming is great on the PC, and the weapons feel awesome. The sound is amazing, and the voice acting and writing are great. The gameplay is overall straightforward, but that doesn't bother me. Yes, you just move from cover to cover and shoot it out with cops. That's why I bought the game.

Honestly, if the technical issues were fixed and the AI was tightened up then I would easily recommend this to everyone who would listen. The time I spent playing was overall enjoyable. As it stands, however, I can only say 'proceed with caution'.

Kane & Lynch is outdated fare for pc-gamers with years of experience speeding or slogging or sneaking through generations of FPS games. As far as ports go, it's not the most disappointing I've ever played (WHY DIDN'T HALO INCLUDE CO-OP!!!). K&L attempts to bring squad-based combat to the seedy crime story shooter sub-genre of gaming. It does not succeed. Unfortunately for its publishers, it is probably the least competitive FPS on the PC game market today.

(I don't know how good it looks on an x-box or PS3, and I don't really care. This is a PC game review, so if you love playing this game on your console, please observe that I am only reviewing the PC port of this game.)

The first problem with K&L is the poor AI. The AI controller feels ancient after playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and Crysis. Opponents and teammates go straight to objective points (cover positions, good firing positions, or ordered destinations), without utilizing cover or providing covering fire. Also, your teammates sometimes, momentarily, stick on walls or cover while running past, which demonstrates, among other things, pathfinding problems in the AI.

The zoom/aim fire is severely outdated. Iron-sights have been an industry standard for years in the PC shooter market, and the fact that K&L uses an old mini-zoom with a crosshair change instead of well rendered iron sights significantly drops its comparative worth.

K&L's graphics appear last-gen or mediocre when compared to its competitors (Crysis, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl). Even with tweaking to max the graphics on my machine, the K&L graphics weren't as smooth or realistic as any of the other three games listed. This might be harsh, but playing K&L right after finishing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the graphics in K&L were like cartoons.

Speaking of tweaks, this game actually required them. I personally take it as a bad sign when a game has problems playing on default settings in a system with better than recommended specs. I do tweak my games and hardware settings for performance, sound, and graphics enhancement, but a game should run smoothly, if not maxed out, when loaded onto a computer with better than recommended specs. K&L doesn't do that. I had to tweak my settings just to get it to run smooth. The publishers just rushed too hard, and compatibility suffered. This is poor coding like I haven't seen since Max Payne, that gem of a game, showed us all what good, tight code could do for a game.

Scripting in K&L is much less than smooth. Enemies can spawn three feet in front of the player if one moves too quickly for the heavily scripted AI to keep up. For example, I took the left hand slope/path toward the docks from the church. Unfortunately, I moved to the exit too quickly for the game to register, so it spawned five enemies right on top of me. Poof, there they were. This should never happen. I haven't seen spawns this visible since the 90's. More than anything else, multiple bugs of this kind, throughout the game, demonstrate very, very poor scripting.

Squad controls are extremely limited. The game doesn't allow you to hotkey the squad command submenu orders or hotkey individuals in your squad. This might sound like nitpicking, but there have been some really good squad command control structures offered in squad based PC titles over the past five years, and the K&L team didn't use any of them. In the end, the squad based controls, especially when combined with poor AI pathfinding, where more frustrating than helpful. I ended up just beating the game using ancient run and gun tactics, and only using the squad commands when they were required.

Combat controls also suffer. The fire-from-cover feature is a cool addition to gaming, but please let us control our character. Titles in the Splinter Cell, Metal Gear, or Gears of War series allow you to key into and out of cover in their control systems. Having crates or walls GRAB you when you're trying to walk away from them is really annoying. So, in this area, K&L falls short of both old and new titles.

Finally, the game is way too short. Frankly, for fifty bucks, I expect twelve hours of straight through game-play at a minimum. I don't appreciate sitting down during the week to warm up for some serious weekend game-play, only to beat the game in under five hours. It was sad. Even with all of the frustrations, bugs, and annoyances, the game didn't take up more time than a DVD movie with a decent set of special features. This, more than anything else, makes me say that this game isn't worth more than $20-$25, which is about what you would pay for audio-visual entertainment lasting between 4 and 5 hours.

I cannot recommend Kane & Lynch: Dead Men for any attribute except a decent attempt at having a story line of sorts. It is surpassed by other new FPS games on the PC market in all aspects of game design, play, and visual effects. The best FPS games on the PC market are currently Crysis, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, BioShock, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. These are all great games in different ways. They all do some really new things, or revamp old stuff in new and extremely improved ways. So, if you have to have a really good FPS this year get one of them, and leave Kane & Lynch on the shelf.

This is a game that enjoys one of the most SOLID story-lines that came out of game developing in the last 3 years. Unfortunately, this was NOT enough.

You are Kane, an aged mercenary and former member of a criminal brotherhood known as The 7. The last heists failed, you get arrested and convicted - yet you are a traitor in The 7's books anyway. Having you for making off with the loot somehow, they send Lynch (a psychotic, easily distracted and pill-popping murderer) to first break you out of prison and then make sure he gets their money back. They are sure you will play ball: they have kidnapped your wife and daughter to ensure it.

Now this is a foundation to built a GREAT TPS game! Unfortunately KANE & LYNCH does not reach the top floor as the game demonstrates all the flaws of a rushed release.

The character movements feel too scripted and automatic at some places (a console left-over I guess) whereas they have to be spoon-fed detailed directions at some others. Since one cannot predict where the one or the other will occur, it will eventually get on your nerves.

The squad curse is not lifted for KANE & LYNCH either: the AI of your squad is infantile at best - but you will be thankful that your enemies do not demonstrate a higher one either!
Also, the game is pretty short: it shouldn't take you more than 7 hours on normal difficulty.

Graphically this is a beautiful game - notably though not at par with, say, CRYSIS. Keep in mind that the strength of KANE & LYNCH is its story.
The gameplay and the cut-scenes blend seamlessly and the story flows like an A-List movie. And you will definitely not get bored: from the inside of a prison, to rappelling from a skyscraper, to escaping a packed Tokyo dance club...

Although a well developed character story and a visually well designed game, they did NOT complete their follow through!

A disappointment...

Like a schmuk I thought that going to vista with my new HO(P) d4790y would mean a happy gaming experience with my new-ish Gforce 8600GTS with 640mb of RAM, my numerous cores of intelligence, my 4 gig of RAM (Yes, the kinfunts at HP sold me 4 when the OS can only see 3.. law suit anyone ?)
Any way, once again the "for Windows" slogo on the box persuaded me to buy the game, only to find after dicking about for a whole evening that the window they refer to is "throw this crap out of the window in anger" no hope of making it run on Vista.

AVOID THIS GAME. I even tried to run it on my lame old XP SP2 machine with a decent enough ATI card and it failed to function..

I also downloaded all the newest NVIDIA drivers. After the first install failed, it would not complete, I removed K and L and reinstalled the drivers, faced numerous system hangups.. Thanks EIDOS, you are the next best thing to a virus, you lame frigers.

I purchased this game because of the connection with the Hitman series which was enjoyable. I wish I hadn't wasted the money. It's buggy and the inability to skip past cut scenes after death gets really frustrating. The story is alright and somewhat entertaining but there are many other titles which are much better, while not 3rd person shooters I'd check out Bioshock, Call of Duty 4, Crysis, the Witcher, The Orange Box (team fortress 2, and portal), etc.

I had a blast anticipating this game and going along with all the hyped in the media. Although this excitement ended after the final scene in the game.

My expectations for the game were far too great for what is at hand. Don't get me wrong, the parts where you get to mow down scores of baddies in one mission is quite thrilling. Though there is no re-playability to the game as a whole! I played the game through in 6 hours, looking under every rock, tree, room, building, etc., and there's nothing for me to go back to. It's like a B movie, maybe if they have additions to this game in the future, you can see this game as a piece in the puzzle. Though for now, it is just piece #1 in a thousand.

The repetitive death audio clips can annoy you after you die 50 times because you cannot locate the baddie in time for his sniper bullet. Controls are designed for a console controller. In this game I was expecting at least a few bosses to fight against, but all in all there were none except for the ending. :/

The PLUS side to this game is that it does have a few exciting moments and the banter between Kane and Lynch is quite humorous. Also the group controlling is fun, but has been done better elsewhere. If they would have added a few more scenes and actually ended the game's storyline better, I would give it a higher score.

That's my motto for this game is: buy it, beat it, sell it. Cheers!

I never got a chance to play this game because it wouldn't work on my PC,don't know why cause according to the specs,I meet all the requirements.Now I'm stuck with this game and no one wants to give me a refund

This game is actually pretty terrible on Windows. It is more fun on the XBOX, but definitely not on Windows. This game is a port, which means it was designed to run on a console but was "tweaked" to make it run on a PC. This is almost never a good thing to do! This time, it is down right horrible.

The graphics are outdated, the camera angles are terrible, you have to survive between save spots which the game does automatically for you, the gun fights are the same thing over and over. VERY repetitive and so obvious you can predict the attacks every time. Not to be mean, but I think the other reviewers here must have been under 15 years old, because only someone so young could still be satisfied by a game this lame.

The voice acting is forced, the story line is good but who cares about story lines? If you are going to pay $45, do you really want a story line or do you want a good FPS???!!!

The game play is not as smooth as it should be. You cling to walls when you don't want to, fight the camera to get good shooting angles, your teammates get in the way constantly or the shoot you apart and at times they cannot hit the broad side of a ware house! It is not easy to control your men or position them either. This requires some complicated keyboard combos that are not easy when you are getting pounded by some ridiculously accurate at times bad guys!!

Bad cut scenes, that some times you cannot skip past. UGGGHH!
Bad game play.
Bad voice acting.
Bad, out dated graphics.
Bad camera angles.
Bad keystroke combos.
Bad bugs that cause the story to halt at times.
BAD.
BAD.
BAD.

Not worth $15 in the discount bin. Don't bother with this until it is less than $15. Why blow $45 on this when COD 4, Crysis, UT 3, Time Shift and many others are out there that will definitely provide much more entertainment for you and higher replay value!

In Kane & Lynch - Dead Men you play as Kane, a death row inmate who has been convicted of manslaughter. During a prison transport your vehicle is involved in a planned crash. Kane, a ruthless mercenary, escapes along with fellow inmate Lynch, a medicated psychopath. Kane soon learns that his wife and daughter (who both ironically despise him) are being held captive by a crime organization known as The7, apparently for a large sum of money Kane owes them. Thus, the story is twofold as Kane along with Lynch (as a watchdog for The7) attempts to reclaim stashed money to pay his debt to The7 in hopes of freeing Kane's wife and daughter. Together they truly make up a grim duo which results in presenting a very dark, disturbing and gritty criminal storyline. Here are my thoughts on Kane & Lynch - Dead Men;


Pros

+ Gritty adult crime story.

+ Excellent voice acting.

+ Superb soundtrack by Jesper Kyd (Assassin's Creed, Robotech Invasion, Hitman, Freedom Fighters).

+ Ability to replay missions and change difficulty levels.


Cons

- Checkpoint Save system.

- No patch was ever issued, however the game only crashed once for me during the entire play through. I've noticed many complaints in other reviews about crashing. Honestly, this game crashed the least out of the last 10+ games I've played.

- Some lengthy load times.

- Overuse of profanity (mainly the F-word) can make some conversations sound laughable rather than serious.

- Uses Windows Live and pesters you about it every time you load up the game.

- Cover system can be buggy.

- Bad teammate AI. Often they'll run right in front of you while you're firing or charge right into the open and get gunned down. This is particularly annoying since you fail the mission if they die. In order to avoid failure you have to run out to revive them only to be gunned down exactly the same way, also ending the mission. Most of the time I'd just order the team to stay put and do everything myself, basically defeating the purpose of even having a team. If you've ever played Guild Wars and used the NPC mercenaries on missions you'll understand what I mean.

- Missions can feel a bit disjointed as you travel around the world rather abruptly. The story bounces from the U.S. to Tokyo twice finally ending in Cuba and Venezuela.


Fun, but at times frustrating, Kane & Lynch - Dead Men was an enjoyable ride of law breaking mayhem. The adult theme of the story kept my interest through the entire game. I will caution players that if you don't enjoy similar games like Grand Theft Auto etc., then it's doubtful you'll enjoy this game. Although the play style is different it still involves plenty of "defending yourself" against Law Enforcement. If you can look past some of the games annoying flaws you'll find some entertaining gameplay. The sequel, Kane & Lynch - Dog Days continues the story of the gruesome twosome and is in my upcoming games to play list.

Edit -- Problem Solved (no thanks to Eidos):

So i finally got an answer from Eidos. First they told me to try updating windows, and when I said it was up to date they told me to send the disk in. The would check it for manufacturing defects, and if found defective, replace it. Knowing this would be a monumental waste of my time and shipping dollars, i decided to tinker with it some more instead.

I should note that since my computer monitor is the 61" living room DLP at 1920x1080, i'm running it at 120 DPI so as not to require binoculars to read text. Theorizing this might have something to do with the erroneous performance, I modified the kaneandlynch.exe properties to disable DPI scaling and run with administrator priviledges (just for kicks). Lo and behold, this made the game work.

Now i'm just mad about the fact that the game does not allow the use of my logitech controllers. It forces the user to use the microsoft xbox360 controller for windows. This is sort of like buying a computer that only allows you to use internet explorer, but not firefox (only in this case you paid money for firefox beforehand). I'm not sure if Eidos or Microsoft is repsponsible for this. It could very well be a specification of the "games for windows" standard to disable use of third party controllers in order to promote sales of the microsoft controller. If this is the case, i hope microsoft gets sued for all they're worth. this is an illegal practice that defrauds the consumer and the competition. It's only a matter of time before logitech and saitek take action. I mean, i heard good things about the microsft controller, and considered buying one before, but this approach leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and makes me not want to buy it just out of spite.



Original Post:
-----------------------------------------------
I bought this game thinking that "Games for Windows" meant it would work on my newly-built gaming HTPC with vista home premium, a quad core phenom 9550, 4GB of DDR2-800, Nvidia 9600GT, 1TB RAID0 SATA array, dual HDTV tuners, etc, etc. I was very excited at the fact that i finally found what appeared to be a decent game i could play split screen on my 61" with my wife (yes, people do have multiple usb controllers). The game appears to install fine, although much to my dismay, it DOES NOT WORK AT ALL. When i try to start it it simply gives me an error that reads "unable to create device. try changing resolution or color depth." This is followed by an equally obscure C++ error, and the the game just quits to desktop.

I tried different resolutions and color depths to no avail, although I'm normally running at 1920x1080, 32-bit color. is that really so bizarre?

I contacted eidos a couple of weeks ago, and i have not gotten a response from them at all (nor do i expect to get one). It looks like they transferred eveyone from QA and tech support to their marketing team so they can advertise this worthless excuse for a paperweight and pressure people to fire those that give it an honest review.

I've built more systems than i can remember at this point, and i've also coded more than a few programs for work, home and play, so i would consider myself pretty proficient with computers. I've done all the obvious stuff already: update windows, the video card drivers, enable/disable suspect windows services, check my registry, etc, and the fact that this game still does not work leads me to the conclusion that it is just broken.

The good news is that some people have indeed been able to get this thing to work on their computers. So if you're the gambling type, give this a shot. Otherwise, avoid this game and eidos like the plague. From the reviews i've now read, even when it works, this game isn't worth your time anyhow.