Write-Up
Write-Up:
I’ll tell you what; this title certainly caught me off guard. Released today, Square-Enix and IO-Interactive’s “Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days” brings some pretty intense third-person action to the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC and it absolutely deserves its Mature rating because this game is busting from its seams with obscene language, blood, violence and nudity. I haven’t played the first “Kane and Lynch” so I started this title blindly and after playing through it and it’s several multiplayer modes, I’ve got some mixed feelings about several aspects of the game, especially regarding its unique presentation. Nonetheless, if you’re looking for a very distinct multiplayer experience or a violent story that would put “The Godfather” to shame, you might check this out. Here’s “Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days”.
Being that I hadn’t played the first “Kane and Lynch” title, it took me a little while to figure out exactly what the hell was going on. The game opens almost immediately with instant action as Kane meets Lynch in Shanghai for another escapade for some easy money. Lynch has been living in Shanghai with his girlfriend Xui and lined up a deal with his boss to escort some firearms to Africa. With his buddy now in town, Lynch decides to pull some gangster shit on a local businessman and things go sour when Lynch shoots the guy’s girlfriend and then watches the man kill himself. From here things escalate pretty quickly as the two appear to be caught up in the middle of a massive gang war, but we soon find that there are additional parties involved including corrupt businessmen and law enforcement.
Pretty much the entire game is a huge firefight with different factions chasing after Kane and Lynch for reasons that you discover along the way, putting the two anti-heroes in some pretty crazy situations that cause tension to rise between each other and all kinds of dramatic moments ensue. Really, the story is great; it was a little hard to understand at first, but once the pieces come together and things escalate it gets pretty damned good.
The Story Mode in “Dog Days” consists of 11 levels and should only take you around 6 hours to complete. Both local split-screen and online co-op are supported for the Story Mode so that you and a buddy can each play as Kane or Lynch to spice things up and certainly make it easier, because when you play solo, your partner is retarded and either stands there doing nothing or shoots but doesn’t kill, that is, if you’re lucky enough for him to be in the same room as you in the first place.
I think the real selling point to the game is it’s unique multiplayer game modes. These are really interesting and certainly something that I’d not yet seen in a shooter game. They pretty much revolve around working together as a band of criminals to grab a bunch of money in a certain time period and escape. As you begin your escape, friendly fire is disabled and you may backstab your allies and steal their loot, or work together to successfully escape and avoid the police. Another game mode puts one of the players in the shoes of an undercover cop during the heist and he must try to prevent the others from escaping after they secure their loot. Finally a team deathmatch mode puts the players in the shoes of the cops and robbers as the robbers try to escape with the money and the cops try to prevent it. After each round in multiplayer games you have the ability to purchase better gear that significantly increases your likelihood of survival, but at the cost of some of your loot. You will also level up based on how much loot you secure, granting you access to better weapons to purchase, so its obviously a Catch-22 as to how much loot to spend and how much to hold on to.
Throughout the 48-hour journey you’ll play all levels minus the final one as Lynch, as the story really revolves around him, but as for the actual game-play, I’ve got some mixed feelings. My first impressions, at least of the first three levels is that the game was not fun by any means. It’s a lot like “Gears of War” with the constant usage of cover, but the guns were so inaccurate that the cover fights just took for fucking ever. In addition, it just seemed that the entire game was based around these cover fights, which I don’t particularly find too fun.
Once you get a little further in and gain access to some of the better weapons, and more importantly, understand the game mechanics, things got a bit more entertaining. See, Lynch is not an ex-soldier like Kane, and as such, doesn’t have the precision shooting skills, so the mechanics make sense. The game supports more so blindly shooting and puts an emphasis on quantity over quality in regards to bullets.
In addition, the game is pretty freaking tough. I died all the damn time, but luckily a pretty good auto-save system is built in that prevents you from having to replay too much of the level. You don’t level up or gain any special skills throughout the story mode, but you do have access to a plethora of weapons to keep things interesting. Typically the weapons you pick up from gang members suck ass, but the cop and especially the S.W.A.T. weapons are significantly more powerful and accurate.
The presentation of the game is something truly unique, but you’re either going to love it or you’re going to hate it. Being that the game is third person, the camera system acts as if there is a third person running behind you with a camcorder and shooting all of your actions. It really moves like a person holding a camcorder as its really shaky, especially when you are running. There are filters placed on the camera that make everything kind of blurry and cause it to act like a real camcorder in high and low-light situations. Something that bugged me was that when you’re shot, everything just looks terrible and horribly pixilated with huge black pixels. I imagine that this was by design, but I hated it. On top of that, all of the graphics look very dated and washed out, but the environments are destructible which is pretty cool. It’s neat to shoot at a wall of tiles and see each one crack and fall off as your bullet hits it.
Something else that I found rather odd was that there is no soundtrack. I suppose that method was used to keep things more realistic or more intense, but it kind of caught me off guard. Now, the voice acting on the other hand is superb, as long as you can deal with constant and near-over-the-top profanity. It was kind of funny to hear Lynch throw the f-bomb and freak the shit out every time a new pack of cops swarmed into the room though!
“Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days” was quite an odd title for me, as it really caught me off guard. Being that I didn’t play the first title, I really had no idea what to expect going into this beyond that I was going to be playing a pair of criminals on some kind of mischievous adventure. The story I thought was fantastic and probably could be made into a movie that would likely be well received by the general public. The multiplayer game-modes are quite unique and very entertaining, especially when friendly fire gets turned off and you don’t know if and when your teammates are going to stab you in the back and take all of your money. It really keeps things intense and extremely exciting. But beyond that, the actual game-play is very mediocre, at least in the single player story mode where you’re constantly barraged with endless cover-battle after cover-battle. The presentation of the game is extremely awkward, not so much in the movement of the camera, but simply in the low-quality visuals and the really weird filters placed on the cameras. “Kane and Lynch 2” has some pretty good highs and some pretty bad lows, so I’m not exactly sure how I feel about this one. What are your thoughts? Does the story intrigue you enough to merit your purchase, or do the washed out visuals and awkward game-play mechanics steer you away? Leave your questions and comments below!
Developer: IO Interactive
Publisher: Eidos Interactive, Square Enix
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Price: $59.99
Review Video: http://www.youtube.com/ZeitgeistReview
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**This title was provided to me free of charge from the publisher to review for you.
