Customer Reviews

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

(before i begin, i must give a very big THANK YOU to XBM for including the Kane & Lynch demo on their magazine demo disk. after reading and watching all the horrible reviews i would have never even bothered to download the demo via XBL. i've learned a very important lesson though, never let other people/reviewers make a decision for you, experience things for yourself, because you never know....)
ok. so this game got really trashed for various reasons, most having to do with some fat reviewer on gamespot, a bunch of his cronies from various other magazines, and tons of mindless "gamers" who never even took the time to play the game. you know all about the stupid controversy, and if you want to learn more, search out gamespot or google. enough. time for my review:

K&L is all about throwing the player into his or her own Michael Mann wet dream. K&L are extremely dark characters, who are very much at home with killing, cussing, betrayal, and death. Kane is a man obsessed with revenge, and Lynch is a skitzo that has lost his mind.
If you are reading this review, you probably know all about the characters and story, so i wont go into detail about it. Just realize one thing: K&L is a character driven game. The thing that sets K&L apart from most all other shooters is that story is the most important feature in the game.
In a word, the game-play is "fun." you usually have a team of baddies with you and with the push of a button can command them to stay close, investigate a certain spot, or attack a specified area. this makes the game very easy to pick up and play and reminiscent of the creaters previous "Freedom Fighters" game.
besides taking care of your team another important thing to remember to do in k&l is to take cover. you can blind fire, or precision aim once you are safely crouched behind a wall or other such life saving barricade. k&l is positively NOT a run n' gun game. far closer to gears of war than to (i dunno, been a while since i played a typical shooter) serious sam, or the punisher?
the game takes you to many different geographical locations, the best being a u.s. airport, a tokyo dance club and on a bank heist.
there is also multiplayer in the game called "fragile alliance." as i do not have the XBL gold membership at this time, i cannot review this part of the game. the object from what i've read is to go in with a team, steal a large sum of money, then decide if you want to murder your partners & keep the loot to yourself, or let everyone live and share it.
K&L is a linear game, yet not to the point where you feel like you cannot use the environment to your benefit. if you see a busted up car far off somewhere, chances are you can run up to it and use it for cover.
many people have complained about the controls in k&l, so let me tell you exactly how it is. ever play hitman? ever play hitman and get so frustrated that you blow your cover and go on a shooting rampage? if you can remember how those controls and targeting system is, you have a (less detailed) idea of how the controls in k&l are. READ the manual. edit the controls to your liking!
no game is perfect and here are the problems i found while playing k&l:

1. hit detection could have used another couple of months work. i'll be firing half a clip off into a far away targets face and nothing happens!

2. cover system could also have used another couple of months work as well. sometimes, i'll try and take cover and absolutely how i fiddle with the coverage, nothing happens.

3. the later levels of K&L, although still gripping and fun, cannot hold a candle to k&l's earlier shootouts.

ultimately, k&l is a very fun, story driven, gritty, adult action game. k&l should definitely NOT be ignored and shunned like it has been, hence the reason why i've written this review.

I was looking forward to Kane & Lynch: Dead Men; an action game where you play as a mercenary and a psychopath, who team up. The concept sounds cool, but the game is sadly an ultimate failure. The cool concept gets killed thanks to some unbelievably bad controls, even more unbelievably bad AI, a surprisingly lame story, and so many utterances of the F-word to make the game seem gritty that a majority of the story and dialogue just comes off as laughable. If you manage to get passed what I just mentioned, you'll find some mindless gunplay to be had, along with some interesting twists on the multiplayer modes (even though there is no online co-op mode), but whether or not you get that far into the game is another story. Let it also be said that Kane & Lynch isn't as bad as many of the reviews here make it out to be, and while the graphics aren't anything to write home about, they're not terrible either. All in all, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men may be worth a glimpse at best, but other than that, this can be easily avoided.

Kane and Lynch has terrible graphics, poor controls, a lame story, and shoddy collision detection. It is absolutley a TERRIBLE game.They simply dressed a half-baked game with plenty of F-bombs and violence, and hoped gamers wouldn't notice how bad it truly is. You should be VERY careful buying ANY game made by EIDOS (the creators of this piece of trash)as most of their games are as bad as Kane and Lynch, or dare I say worse.

How bad is it? Eidos paid tons of advertising space on the internet for this game, (which has a universal average of under 6.5 out of ten)and now bully game sites into firing their reviewers when they tell people how bad the game is. They are hoping you won't hear how bad this game really is.

Amazon has TONS of GREAT 360 and PS3 games, many that just came out this very month.If you want yourself or a loved one to enjoy the holiday season, buy them one of these better games, and not the HORRIBLE,LAZY, and CRAPPY Kane and Lynch.

This game is terrible. The controls are like wrestling with an alligator, the graphics look like something on the PS1, the story is beyond laughable, and the sound will blow out your speakers (and not in a good way). I wouldn't wish this game on my worst enemy. I just wish I could give it 0 stars. The best thing you can say for this game is that the disc might make a good frisbee. The cover art is the best part of the experience.

Great idea & concept combined with terrible controls, graphics, & AI. I finished this game on normal in 3 days & didnt play multiplayer & maybe the game is good there but I didnt buy this for multi. This game truly needed about 6 months worth of work or more. How this game made it out of the beta testing phase is one huge mystery.

This game made it back to the shop in record time. Really annoying dialogue, extended cut scenes which could not be escaped from. Poor controls and poor enemy AI - the list goes on. To be fair I should mention I played in co-op mode but that was a huge selling point for me so I thinks it's OK to judge it on that.

In short not worth getting. Maybe my expectations were too high after playing Resistance but this game really should not have made it to release.

This game was just ugly. Ugly story, game mechanics, and dialog. Rent it if you have to. Not worth buying.

I have been gaming for years and this was the first game I have ever rented; luckily. I usually buy games new or buy them used. I am so happy I rented this terrible game and didn't blow any money on it. Actually, I take that back. I'm still a bit upset that I wasted my free rental coupon on it and didn't use it on a more deserving game. The controls are extremely loose, the weaponry and graphics are unrealistic, and it gets a bit confusing at times what the goal of the mission is. It's a shame that this game was not delivered as it could have been. It's a great idea that was poorly executed. It's just Blah.

K&L, started off pretty cool. The opening action scene was a lot of fun. Two prisoners being transported to another place, and then BAM, an escape occurs. You have cops and baddies blasting everywhere. You start off in a daze from the crash and you can barely move. Then you get your head straight and start booking it with Lynch and his members. You find a pistol inside a garage that gets swarmed with cop cars outside. All you can do is start blasting your way out. You finally get to another spot that gets swarmed also, but with a lot more cops. Your guys start screaming to just run for the building across from you. You have to run through a haze of bullets into a tiny doughnut shop which also gets surrounded and blasted at with windows getting shot out... and all you can do is wait for your get away driver.

Talk about fun.

Then there are even some more good missions after that, like a bank heist which ends up a lot like the movie 'Heat'. I was having a lot of fun.

But then after a few missions the story and scenarios just got...well..way off track. I mean seriously...you end up in a jungle for pete's sake.

Let me tell ya some goods and bad that I thought of this game.

Good:

1. The beginning missions. Lots of fun and made you feel like a bad guy. A transport escape, bank heist, running down some main streets shooting and trying to run from cops, a car chase scenario, and a few more.

2. The talking. Kane is a little more level headed, while Lynch is a little nutso. It was funny listening to Kane scream "WHAT THE (enter a bad word here) WERE YOU THINKING...YOU CANT JUST KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE LIKE THAT!!!" and then have Lynch respond pretty calmly with "Oh relax...we got out of there didnt we?", well...it fit just right for these two guys. Even though there was a lot of cursing (and I mean a LOT), it went well with supposedly two very bad men. Sometimes a little to much...even for a person with a sailors mouth.

3. The graphics werent extremely bad. Sometimes it felt like PS2 graphics..then sometimes it looked much better. It never really did bother me.

Now for the bad:

1. The story. Wasnt hard to understand, but it just felt...really bland. It's like they wanted to do more with it than what they did. Felt really rushed.

2. The later missions. Even though they weren't...bad...they just felt incredibly out of place. I mean, come on...a jungle? And one time I even felt like I was in Iraq or something. Just wierd.

3. No sneaky sneaky. For instance, one time in the jungle I had to sneak up on a guy and tackle/kill him instead of shoot him. Well the guy would walk right up on me and not notice me. Or I could be in the same spot doing the exact same thing...and then he WOULD notice me. Also why in the heck would you give me a pistol with a silencer on it, but not make it where no one would hear it. I would silently shoot the guy and an army of men some 100 yards away would start blazing me down with fire. It made no sense.

4. The game is extremely to short and easy. I beat the game in 6 hours. SERIOUSLY. 6 hours. And I was playing on the second hardest difficulty. Sure I could try it on the hardest now, but I just dont want to.

5. Replay value. Maybe the first couple of levels are replay worthy, but after that...yeah...not really. Maybe if they had an option to play Lynch the second time through, I could see that being a huge boost for it...but sadly..there isnt that option.

6. The two endings. Hahahahaha. What a joke. At least I'll give them this. If you decide to take the ending where you can save some of your guys, you get to play another level.

And then the SO/SO:

1. The AI. Sometimes it was pretty good. You would have 20 cops just destroying everything around you trying to kill you. A haze of bullets everywhere. That was nice. But then, I could be running somewhere and out of nowhere I'd turn a corner and two cops would be standing there and never look at me. Just shooting at my buddies. That would make me roll my eyes.

2. Sorry...I had one more thing, and just cant think of it right now. Maybe I'll remember and edit this.


Also one last thing. I havent played online (my router is jacked right now) and I havent played Co-Op. So I'm not reviewing this portion.

So in the end, I would definitely recommend renting the game for a few bucks. It is not NEARLY as bad as some people are saying. When this came out, Assassins Creed and COD4 just came out a fews before it. Plus Bioshock was still a hot item. Buying is a no no though. Way to short and just so many better games out there to spend 50 dollars on. Sadly I bought it when it came out. Here's hoping Army of Two rocks way more than this one.

This game is so horrible that the company that made it had to fire an EIC for an honest review. Isn't worth $5.
PS Jeff overrated this game