Kane & Lynch: Dead Men Review
Walking, rather than running.
Version tested: Xbox 360
As much as the Hitman series has grown into one of the most interesting shooters around, IO Interactive is smart enough to know when Agent 47 needs to stroke his bar-coded bald bonce and take a few years off. We've been here before, of course. A year after Silent Assassin hit, the Danish developer released the sorely under-rated Freedom Fighters - a game, lest we forget, that Tom reckoned had "the best team-mate AI ever".
And now, having squeezed out a further two Hitman titles since, the Danish developer has revisited some of the squad-based mechanics of its EA-published title for its latest, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.
As you'll have noticed from the striking artwork currently adorning billboards, the two disturbing looking men at the centre of the game aren't your regular action heroes here to save the day from terrorism plots, impending Armageddon, alien invasions or Jeremy Kyle - and thank the flaming lord for that. As someone who has fought in the trenches in the war against gaming cliché, IO deserves a big manly slap on the back for coming up with a game concept that's at least trying to do something different.
In this case, neither of these death row inmates are the sort you'd want to swap stories over a pint with. While yours would probably meander through thoughts on overpaid, demotivated footballers and wry observations on how your ex-girlfriend's new lover looks like a real-life version of Mr Burns, Adam 'Kane' Marcus' would silence the entire bar, Slaughtered Lamb-style. The death of 25 Venezuelan citizens notwithstanding, the fact that this flawed mercenary's two-year old son shot himself with Kane's casually discarded service gun didn't win him any popularity points with his estranged wife.
Model citizen

Havana laugh: one of the more challenging segments of the game.
And what of James Seth Lynch? Looking every bit as easy on the eye as Harold Shipman with an irony-free mullet, this 41-year-old medicated psychopath was even less popular with his wife, having murdered her and all. But far from being remorseful about his crimes, the schizophrenic Lynch is thoroughly matter-of-fact about the whole thing, claiming to not remember doing it, and represented himself in court as a perfect husband.
The game kicks off like a rugby team falling down a flight of stairs during an earthquake, with one of the most cinematically arresting introductions to a videogame ever attempted. The pair are sat in the back of a van in their orange boiler suits on the way to death row, when they're suddenly busted out. Turns out that Kane is a former member of ruthless mercenary gang The7, and made off with a big stash of diamonds when he mistakenly assumed the rest of the gang were dead. Well, they're very much alive (for now) and have gone to rather extreme lengths to track him down and get what they're owed. Even more extreme is the fact that the unhinged Lynch has been hired as Kane's minder to make sure he does what he's told, but as you soon find out, it's more like the other way around.
So, busted out of a van, you take control of the completely messed-up Kane, with blurred vision, a broken nose and a suspect ability to even walk properly. You stagger haplessly between cover points while determined cops do their best to halt this human heist, dart into warehouses, and quickly find yourself armed and fighting off a frenzied attempt to secure your re-capture. Needless to say, this being a videogame, you're remarkably resistant to flesh wounds, and stumble around quite competently, returning fire with improbable accuracy.
Getting away with it

Happy heisting: all good insurance salesmen are into it these days.
It's an all-action introduction to the wild world of Kane & Lynch and easily comparable with other recent cinematic spectaculars like Uncharted, BioShock and Call of Duty 4 for out-and-out technical impressiveness. The standards of the environments and character models are something to behold, with astonishing levels of detail and the kind of attention to detail that we could only dream of a few years ago. The expletive-strewn script, and the intensity of the violence leaves you in no doubt that the 18 rating is fully justified, and definitely not there for show. Some sections are as ugly and harrowing as the grittiest action movies, and it's a testament to the talent and vision at IO to try something so far removed from the sanitised, cop-out attempts at cinematic gaming. Whether it's your cup of Tetley is another matter entirely, but compare this to, say, The Getaway, and you can see just how far gaming narrative techniques and the quality of the presentation have progressed in that time. Perhaps a more fitting comparison in terms of its desperate 'crisis killing' theme is Max Payne, but whereas Remedy relied on cartoon strips, film noir voice-over stylings and bullet time, the most impressive thing about Kane & Lynch is its capacity to integrate 99 per cent of the narrative seamlessly into the gameplay. In that respect, it does that absolutely brilliantly.
I just wish I could be as unreservedly positive about the core gameplay.
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men wants to be an intuitive third-person shooter, so, in the main, it plays things by the book. No problem there. Like a lot of titles in this crowded sub-genre these days, it's your typical two-stick affair, with left trigger to zoom into the now-obligatory over-the-shoulder view, and the control mappings are largely where they should be (with alternatives if you so choose).
Also, being a modern action game, it encourages you to make sensible use of cover, and makes it a fairly simple process to get to grips with. Sidling up to a wall, the game will assume you want to wall hug, but do the same against a low wall and it won't register as a cover point until you manually crouch first. Several other minor niggles soon become apparent, too, like the that you can't pop in and out of corner cover using the zoom view, or the enormously flaky hit detection. More often than not, you'll be facing enemies also making use of cover, yet what looks like a clear direct hit doesn't count - seemingly because your opponent was, in the game's eyes, in cover. Next to its direct competitors, Gears of War and Uncharted, Kane & Lynch doesn't quite feel as solid as the fantastic game engine suggests it ought to be, and that's a real shame after an awesome first impression.
Taking the fun out

Hair today, goon tomorrow: Not once does Kane take the piss out of Lynch's appalling hair. HOW?!
On top of the definitely-not-terrible-but-not-quite-amazing combat, there are a few other points that tally up in the 'cons' column. Some of the missions, for example, have head-scratching, fun-free moments which negatively diminish your impression of the game to such an extent, you'll wonder how they ever made it through the design process, never mind the QA system. One in particular crops up on the message board time and time again, and involves a dump truck charging towards a hole on a building site with someone you need to save inside it. Now, killing the driver seems like the logical solution, naturally, but does the windscreen smash? Does it hell. This amazing, Teflon-coated bullet shield must bounce off about 100 bullets before it finally caves in, leaving you aggravated and exasperated over such petty-minded set-piece design.
Another level, set in Havana, sports a difficulty spike so severe I'd recommend having a Tetanus booster before you play. Seemingly content to throw an entire army at you and a helicopter at the same time, progress becomes a mixture of painstaking repeat play to figure out where the scripted spawn points are, and a little dollop of luck. Sometimes you'll be downed in one shot and have to rely on an adrenaline boost to revive you from a nearby team-mate, but more often than not, you'll end up shot because you were forced to revive one of your squad-mates. If you're lucky, they'll stay out of trouble, but sometimes it's fairly arbitrary as to whether they cop a stray shot or not.
While we're on the subject of the squad mechanics, for the most part, the game's content to just have Kane & Lynch involved, and as long as you're a half decent gamer you'll rarely have to issue commands. The AI does a pretty decent job of keeping him - or others - involved anyway. But, from time to time, it's always useful to tell Lynch and the other squaddies to fire on a particularly irksome target, especially useful as a suppression tactic so you can flank and take out weaker targets. If you want them to do all the dirty work for you, you can also send them off into a specific position, or just order them to generically follow you around (at which point they'll dynamically adapt, take up cover and select their own targets). Later in the game you get to play the sniper, taking out targets, and creating a safe passage for the person down below to follow at your command, but this is very much a one-off, and perhaps indicative that the game once had a greater squad-control element before someone decided it was more commercially viable as a straight shooter. Shame.

Being John Malkovich: In his spare time, Lynch pretends to be well-known bald Hollywood actors.
Heavy petting
As involving as the plot and environments are, the endless pedal-to-the-metal shooting does throw up another issue - the gameplay's a bit one-tempo for its own good. I hate to bring it up again, but current EG teacher's pet Uncharted demonstrates perfectly how interspersing the shooting with more varied gameplay alternatives not only helps the atmosphere no end, but ensures that the going back to the combat never feels dull. Unfortunately, there's so much shooting in Kane & Lynch, it overdoses on the stuff. And, as I keep saying, the combat's not the game's strongest point, either, meaning that it relies on the sheer 'wow' factor that each new scene brings, and what unhinged stunt Lynch will pull next when his medication is running a little dry. I can't overstate how much the bitter-sweet black humour coursing through the game drives you on. There's more personality in the opening cut-scene than most games manage over their entire length, so hats off for that (unless underneath that hat is a balding mullet, of course).
Meanwhile, anyone who's even vaguely impressed by top notch visuals will want to see what IO has pulled off. Taking its penchant for the kind of globe-trotting variety seen in the Hitman games, Kane & Lynch looks every inch the labour of love it must have been for the art team. Every location is bursting with incidental detail and architectural splendour.
Having recently been to Tokyo, the vivid recreation of the city's clinical urban sprawl was one of the most convincing locations I think I've ever come across in a videogame, complete with the kind of eerie public transport announcements you hear emanating during your travels. It's all fantastically well-observed, whether you're darting through a typical US city street, fighting your way through a jail, bank, nightclub or cutting a swathe through a sub-tropical mountain path. Without exception, everything looks (and sounds) wonderful - especially the facial detail, which ranks alongside the best efforts ever attempted.
But, like we said, all of this technical glory can only count for so much when the core gameplay just doesn't quite live up to the mark. There is a co-op split-screen mode to add a little extra weight to the package, but when the main campaign only clocks in at about 6-7 hours, you'd have maybe expected online co-op to make it worth running through again with a pal.
Trust no-one

Fries with that? And all because the tea was cold.
As it is, after that first all-too-brief play-through, you're left with the Fragile Alliance multiplayer mode and little else but some pretty memories. Eidos has gone to great lengths recently to tell us how great Fragile Alliance is, which you can either interpret as a) fair comment, or b) a means of diverting attention away from the growing number of critical reviews emanating from the US (where they, annoyingly, got to review this over a week ago for reasons which escape us...European game alert). Anyway, I digress, Fragile Alliance is a rather jolly caper where the premise is to earn as much cash as possible from a variety of heists played over a number of rounds. Playable online (on System Link if you prefer) for 4 to 8 players, all members start off in the same place, with the option to fight their way through a heavily guarded location (diner, shopping mall, bank, Japanese garden) in order to get to the loot, marked with a dollar sign and visible on a mini-map (with the most valuable the most well defended).
With the knowledge that other members of the gang may have more cash than you, the 'Fragile Alliance' revolves around who you decide to bump off and when. With several factors to take into account there's an extremely delicate balance, such as whether you need their help to kill the police, whether you suspect that low-earning members might kill you, and, of course, how much cash you have on you at any given point. It's a fascinating concept, and one that helps restore the value to what might have otherwise been a lightweight package. However it is just one mode, and despite the originality of the idea, on its own it can't address the shortfalls of the main single-player portion of the game.

Tokyo ho ho: Bad things happen when you forget when your flight is.
With some incredible talent behind it, Kane & Lynch should have been one of this year's essential action games. IO is unquestionably a studio with a real vision and flair for creating hugely atmospheric, involving games - it just seems to have lavished rather too much attention on how the game looks, how the story hangs together and the characterisation than how the core shooting element feels next to its contemporaries. Next to other 'duck and cover' shooters like Gears of War and Uncharted, it lacks a few crucial refinements which would have made all the difference to a game which, after all, spends most of its time asking players to shoot an onslaught of enemies. Factor in an exceptionally short single-player campaign, an undercooked tactical squad element and a distinct lack of gameplay variety and it's impossible not to see this as a very big missed opportunity. The innovative multiplayer aspect is certainly a nice bonus, but a game such as this can't get by on minor novelties in a market chock full of shooters with fully fledged online elements.
There are many many positives to come out of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, but sadly too many things weigh against it to mark it out as a must-have in a ludicrously competitive environment. Let's hope IO takes heart and comes back with a game which delivers on all counts, and not just some.
7 / 10
Awkward bunch that you are, we recognise that, like a journalist at a free dinner ordering a massive dessert, you're probably still after more Kane & Lynch content. Luckily, EGTV is bringing the sweet trolley around now which a delectable assortment of exclusive gameplay videos to choose from. Take your pick of banoffee car chase, chocolate chip bank robbery and fresh fruit kidnap.
We also recognise you might not like to move after that dessert, which is why you can download it now thanks to Metaboli or buy it on Amazon.
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Comments (60) Latest comment 4 years ago
Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!
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And, apparently first.
/had to
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Please excuse the language, the fella gets quite emotional.
http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=25LceCPO1ys
Remember, this is Living.
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Sony need to put him out of his misery as they really don't need him as a fanboy.
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gangstaaaa kid.
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thank you please!
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wow!!!! how???
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One for a budget release probably.
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To be fair, it was mostly movement that was cocked up for me in gow, the shooting was at least accurate.... I just can't see why Gears is held up as the paragon of third person shooting at the moment, as I couldn't play it at all. I want to be able to control a character, not have it make decisions independant of what I'm trying to make it do. It sounds like the auto-aim in this is making decisions about where you want to aim. Is there any way to turn the auto-aim off? Usually I find that makes the bullets hit the targets in a few games I've played.
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this game is dire, biggest dissapointment of the year by MILES. Freedom Fighters was 100x better than this cack. back to gamestation tomorrow, then.
also - good character models? sure, kane and lynch have, everyone elses is rubbish, specially the cops on the tunnel segment - same expression when they're alive, and after i've blasted them in the face with the shotgun.
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1. He probably thinks that voice he is putting on actually sounds cool. Now that is the truest piece of irony on the web right now. At first I thought it HAD to be sarcasm (HAD TO BE), but I think he is actually just dense.
2. He mixes an apparent gangsta stance with some pretty geeky game related comment on FF7. Again irony mixed with gold(y).
3. He seems to suggest that the Wii is a poor games system with no good games... except that if they had a game that simulated pushing a sex aid up his bum... then it would be ok and he would probably buy that one.
Either he is a comedy genius in the vein of Chris Morris, or a deluded dullard. Comedy geniuses tend to be pretty thin on the ground, so I'll bet on the latter.
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Well, not now they won't. It must be really hard to be a reviewer nowadays. I kinda feel sorry for you guys in some ways, it must feel like you are constantly caught between a rock and a hard place. With a loyal reader-base to please and the constant pressure (and no doubt threats) from publishers.
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"n!ggr, n!ggr da ps1's got finl fantsy sevn".
And those arent' spelling errors, it's how he talks.
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"true games have some fiddy cent in da background, sum fat joe, sum BALLING, not sum this mad world sh*t".
LOL.
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I'm rather proud of myself - I managed 35 seconds. Barely.
That was just pure torture.
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I had to watch it again, just from the perspective of that fella not being a complete and utter prick. And if it was a riff on insane fanboys, it would be embarrassingly accurate. But he is quite simply an idiot. (Or maybe, just far too good at playing a caricature. So convincing a caricature that even our own dear fanboys think that he is over the top)
Somehow, this vid just gets funnier with every viewing. "Look at my hair. Black. Slick. Like the PStriple. I used to have blond hair. But I dyed it black"
"You know how many girls I get with the PStriple?"
apologies to xerxes - I had never seen the video up until today, but I suppose with 700,000+ viewings, somebody on Eurogamer had to have seen it.
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In saying that, even as I type this I can't be too sure.
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Haha, great stuff.
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how do you generically follow someone
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http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=aeDffX9O6ac
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"how do you generically follow someone"
I really wanted to be able to do a funny walk in response to that, whilst saying "like this". Stoopid text limitations.
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http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=kBVmfIUR1DA
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But nothing is as funny as the original.
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I've been playing K&L for a few hours in work, and it's one of the buggiest releases I've played in a good while, all faults have pretty much been explained by a poster before me. Also, I'm not sure why Kristan keeps going on about the graphics? I thought they were terrible, most of the time looking like a well programmed PS2 title, but not at all next gen in any way, infact Hitman Blood Money was far more impressive looking :/
Unless of course it all gets a bit better looking along the way, but the first few chapters have been really bland looking,(Especially the initial shoot out in the carpark) there just seems to be no texture detail to anything.
I actually thought the entire first page of this review was taking the piss, and he was really going to lay into it on the second, but nooo.
Strange review, but hey, personal opinion and all that.
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What a waste of skin!
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I only played the first three missions but it seemed rather decent from what I saw... loud, chaotic, violent and full of swearing... definitely has that distinctive Io look to it in terms of art design (which I love) and although the textures and detail aren't amazing, the game does run smoothly with little or no slowdown, no jarring texture pop-in, no tearing and no mid-level loading pauses (at least in single player) despite there being tons of stuff going on at time. Character models look great and the enviroments are impressive in terms of size and draw-distance. It's certainly a lot of fun so far even if the cover system is a bit hit-and-miss and the A.I. seems a bit dumb. Best opening to a game ever too...
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Having played it for a bit now (I am in Tokyo, just after the truck scene which I had no problem with) I fully agree with your statement about the graphics, and especially the faces. Can't quite believe I am reading so many negative comments about the graphics, the game looks fantastic, and just oozes style in every scene. Seems like all people do these days is count the layer of shiny effects, and have no eye for the overall picture, and style. The game often looks like a Hopper painting in motion.
And yes, faces are amazing. Especially Kane looks eerily lifelike in many of the (game engine) cutscenes.
It's far from being perfect, but I am enjoying it a lot, and Gears of War - a better game, no doubt - has nevertheless been put on the back burner.
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kristan still at EG?...you are trend killers >
*hint*:wasn`t always better to fire people on fridays?
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http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=ZPsw6jtUR68