Customer Reviews

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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

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

If you don't like crime movies with tons of swearing and blood, then you'll hate Kane and Lynch. Yes it's very violent and pretty much every other word that comes out of the character's mouths is the F-word, so if you're easily offended, stay away. Since I don't mind swearing or blood, I rented it and it wasn't AS bad as people said it was. It was still bad, though.

CONS-
poor shooting controls
bad cover system
aiming is a mess
swear words felt tacked on and unnecessary
many glitches
teammates are stupid and unresponsive

PROS-
good story
above-average graphics
good voice acting
interesting and somewhat likeable characters
gritty atmosphere and environments
makes you feel like you're in a crime movie

I was really excited for this game. This game reminded me of the big heist scene in "Heat." The game features two great characters and a good storyline.

However, two parts where the game falls flat are the graphics and the gameplay. The graphics are nothing like the graphics seen on the online media sites. It seems the developers used the Hitman: Blood Money engine, which is not that impressive since the Hitman:Blood Money engine was a last-gen engine built on the PS2 and Xbox.

The controls and gameplay are bad. The aiming and hit detection are completely off. It feels like the guns are spraying bullets rather then hitting your targets. The character movement is also sluggish.

I think the levels and their design are varied. I think the concept of the game was very cool. It is just that the game was not executed well.

I bought this game after a salesmam tell me that it was great.
After a day of playing, I think this game is very lame.
First, if die, you have to watch the same cut-scene over and over again. There is no way you can skip it. My wife just ask me if I want to sell it. I'm having some thoughts about it. Probably so.
I wouldn't recomend this game at all.

My title says it all. This is the first game I got with my PlayStation 3, and originally, I was very apprehensive after reading all the reviews circulating the Internet. But really...I fail to see what everyone is complaining about.

STORYLINE: Very different and unique from what we've seen before in video games. You play as Kane, a former mercenary and member of The7, who (believing the other members to have been dead) stashed some money away. They bust him out of jail with the help of Lynch and will kill Kane's family if Kane doesn't get them their money. So basically, you kinda play the bad guy. Well, not really. In the grand scheme of things, Kane is the "good" guy, but in relative terms. Many people criticize the game for not having any "good" or "sympathetic" characters, someone to root for. Kane as a protagonist is a strong character - no, he isn't the flawless hero, but he's a man tormented by his past and trying desperately to save his wife and daughter, even though they hate him. This is a much more fascinating protagonist to have than some goody two-shoes, if you ask me. And the story allows for really terrific missions, such as making your way through a crowded Tokyo nightclub to abduct the owner, and then escape with her. Or busting into prison to break out your old crew. One of my personal favorites is making your way from a Tokyo business building to the streets to your van, fighting off the police, using cars for cover.

GRAPHICS/ANIMATION: Admittedly, I've only had my PS3 for a week now, so I'm no expert, but the animation is pretty solid to me. Sometimes the character models (especially their skin) look too..."shiny". But otherwise, everyone moves well, things look realistic. And while a small thing - but it adds to the ambience so well - is that nearly everything in the environment is totally destructable. Lemme tell ya, there's something cool about being in a shoot-out and seeing the bank lobby fall apart around you.

CONTROLS: Another complaint people have made is regarding the controls, such as the aiming isn't accurate, and that it's difficult to take cover. Unlike most shooting games where you press a button to take cover, if you walk up to or crouch down to a corner, you will automatically assume cover, and can then blind-fire or aim around and fire. And I've read some criticisms that you need to sometimes shoot a person in the head six or seven times to kill them...never happened to me yet. I've had no problem aiming, and usually one good headshot will take someone down.

My only real criticisms: 1) The last act of the game deviates from this "criminal" feel, and it basically becomes a "Freedom Fighters" clone. 2) The ending is a bit abrupt. I don't care much that the endings are "downers", but they just end very...quickly.

Other than that, "Kane & Lynch" is a thrilling, exciting game, and I hope that IO/Eidos build this into a franchise, which they're (reportedly) planning.

When it comes to most gamers, my title is dead on. Here's what joe shmo consumer should know: Some fat guy with a bad attitude used to work at a video game site (games spot) and he got fired. This game was his most famous review because he panned it. That's really about as interesting as this story goes but for some reason, since this was brought up (his panning the game in a video review as possibly being the reason he got fired) over and over again in the gaming press, if you'll call it that since most is just blogs, a lot of jerk off with a computer have rampantly targeted the game without playing it and basically smeared its reputation.

I'm sure they can come up with the same four canned reasons they read this game suffers from being a 10/perfect game. Honestly, it's leagues ahead of Halo 3, which is just more of the same and for an additional $60 a year you can play against these same hate spewing jerks on xbox live in multiplayer. Look, it's Kane and Lynch is a good game. The story is subversive and about 90% of it risky. Will you love it? Probably not. But will it be like everything else out there? No. Look, in a time where a lot of game developers are trying to mix social commentary, subversive plot lines, unlikeable characters, and different kinds of game play together because god forbid they had something different to say... people who like more of the same will disagree.

I'm not going to bash other games. Hell, I'll even take back my Halo game. Although, I'd like Bungie, the publisher, to make a really original title and stop making sequels. I will say, try it out. If you like Reservoir Dogs or the Pusher triology or Heat or Godfellas, then you know there's going to be very unsavory characters here. That's why the game is fun because you probably are not one of these guys and you probably wouldn't let one of these guys around your wife or kids. The graphics are actually wonderful because you're playing in crowded places with innocent people. Lots of them. The sound is great and the game feels more like a movie.

Pretty much, my advice is that if you are going through reviews online, and you see one or two that drastically disagree, use that as fuel to think twice. You would in normal life so it can spill over into online judgements, too.