Picture the scene if you will. You’re at a bar, and an attractive member of the opposite sex is coyly looking at you. After exchanging surreptitious glances, they approach and the real flirting is about to begin. Except as soon as they open their mouth, a stream of liquid projectile poo comes out of it. You think maybe it’ll die down in a moment, but it never stops. Covered in shit, you doubt the experience could get any more shitty and take cover behind the bar. But the cover system doesn’t work, and now you’re drowning in the shitiness that surrounds you. This just about covers the experience of playing Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days.
Kane and Lynch take a moment to regret their worst decision yet; agreeing to appear in this game.
I can only assume they put so much crap in this game to act as fertilizer for a much better Hitman title. Some might judge this game for being a corridor shooter, in a world that seems to expect more sandboxes than the Sahara Desert could fill. Not me, I judge it for all the bad and lazy design choices, producing a title that tries to hide behind a pretty shell but is really filled with listless pacing and unenjoyable gunfights.
The latest fashion in taxidermy – Gold plating.
At only 4 hours long (at a push), it’s pretty impressive that it can feel so laborious to get through. A good 25% of that 4 hour experience will be spent repeating sections due to painful checkpointing and the poor, poor cover system. From the amount of times I was killed in cover I think that Kane and Lynch were advised by their chiropractor to avoid bending their spines too much, even if it means exposure to gunfire. They must also have worked out their shoulder muscles quite recently, as they’re very stubborn about showing them off to the enemy. Either way you get shot and killed an awful lot in or out of cover, leading to what I like to call “Groundhog checkpoints” of the same 5 minutes repeated again and again.
Guns don’t kill people. People don’t kill people either as their guns are pisswank.
These repeating checkpoints would be ok perhaps if the wea-*ED DIED*. These repeating checkpoints would be more tolerable if the weapons could sh-*ED DIED*. These repeating checkpoints wouldn’t grate so much if any weapon in this game could shoot worth a damn. They are widely inconsistent; one moment three heavy machine gun rounds to the head and five to the body won’t fell a man, the next a shotgun kills someone 500 meters away. During later stages this becomes tiresome, as enemy numbers and their individual toughness turn your progress to a snail like grind. In a shooting game I should only be dying from lack of skill, not from lack of functional equipment.
Poor Budgie. It’s a shame what becomes of child actors.
The only praise to be given is that it looks pretty and atmospheric, but sadly you really do stop caring. There’s no variety at all, this is merely a string of firefights in boxes linked by linear corridor fights, sometimes requiring two people to open a door to the next box of conveniently placed cover. Who gives a shit about how nice the lighting is when the fighting works about as well as my grandfather’s bowels? That’s even if you can get the game to work mind. Upon release a pretty major bug prevented quite a few people from even starting up the game, crashing back to desktop for no reason. This still hasn’t been fixed officially, but fortunately somebody on the steam forums has created a quick fix. Just take the three files and put them in the main folder for K&L2 and hey presto, it should work.
Pictured: A K&L2 gunfight. Never Pictured: A fun K&L2 gunfight.
Kane and Lynch 2 is a big insult to all paying gamers, asking £30 for an underwhelming experience dressed up in flashy clothing. Heck, it might not even start when you get it, and even when you have it running the action is sub-par and short, the multiplayer is forgettable and the ending is…well, dissapointing is putting it mildly. If you’re desperate for more Kane and Lynch action play the first game again – though average, that at least was enjoyable for some of the right reasons. Kane and Lynch 2 is only enjoyable when uninstalling, though it will forever leave a faint taint on my hard drive.
It’s totally worth noting that it barely picks up in multiplayer either. I mean, I pretty much hated it even when we were both playing which generally makes stuff more fun.
Well the main mode they’re pushing is fragile alliance, which is just a carry over from K&L1 multiplayer. I’m normally a fan of dumb shooters even if just for the cathartic experience, but this was past dumb and just plain insulting. It’s like how sex is fun, but somebody spunking in your eye isn’t.