Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
By Nick Hackett
Monday. Feb 25, 3:17 PM
A few gameplay flaws sink an otherwise interesting game.

Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Rating: M (mature 17+)
Genre: Action/Shooting
Publisher: Eidos (Developer: IO Interactive)

Career criminals, gritty violence, and plenty of explosions: what’s not to like? Eidos’ newest action game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men has this and more: a big advertising push, big-name developers, and an intriguing premise. Unfortunately, it botches two key elements that would have made it great. Although the game ends up being merely average, it flirts with greatness enough to warrant a brief look.

Developed by IO Interactive (known for the Hitman series), Kane & Lynch: Dead Men follows the exploits of two homicidal criminals. The game starts with Kane on death row, where he is suddenly sprung by Lynch. The two embark on a journey to track down The7, the criminal syndicate that employed them. Details about the characters and their motives emerge in time, and it becomes clear that both men are deeply flawed. The game does little to sympathize with them, resulting in a gritty, dark game about revenge and the limits of redemption.

This dark subject matter is not alien to the video game world, and in this case the story is handled well. It’s not the best game writing ever, but it certainly maintains the mood of the game while giving you plenty of reason to shoot guns. Although there are countless shooting games, few approach the themes of violence and murder like this one. The story, though, isn’t really the problem.

The gameplay of Kane & Lynch involves controlling Kane from a third-person perspective as he guns his way through various scenarios. For the most part things work well, but the game stumbles in two very important areas. The first is the cover mechanic, which simply doesn’t work. Many recent games have employed a cover mechanic, where pressing a button moves your character in and out of cover (see Gears of War, Rainbow Six: Vegas, or Uncharted). In Kane & Lynch, the character snaps in and out of cover automatically, but never consistently. Sometimes Kane will hide behind a wall, sometimes he won’t. The foundation of a solid shooting game revolves around the use of cover, but half the time it simply doesn’t work.

The other major flaw is the AI. Your crew members are incredibly stupid, often getting stuck or running into oncoming fire. On the offensive, they might as well not be there, except that you must follow them into the line of fire to heal them after they are shot. The enemy AI isn’t any better, making the missions more about repetition and memorization than skill. Without good squad AI or a reasonable cover system, the game becomes frustrating. At times it seems entirely broken.

With such weak gameplay, the strong elements of the game pale. The worst thing about this is that the game had so much potential. It almost seems like the designers created the game by compiling the cool action scenes from great movies. Imagine, for example, playing a video-game version of the bank-robbery scene from Heat, complete with intelligent squad mechanics and tense shootouts. Kane & Lynch strives for this, and can be thrilling as a result. But the thrill falls apart after your crew members run into certain death while you pace back and forth behind a wall, hoping desperately to take cover behind it.

The game has good production values with moody music and realistic sound effects. The voice acting is also well done. The game also has some variety in the missions and includes a co-op mode (offline only). I personally enjoyed the bleakness of the story, a sober and mature tale of a man beyond redemption. It is really too bad that these features are buried under messy gameplay.

The online multiplayer game in Kane & Lynch is one of a kind, though it suffers from the same mentioned gameplay flaws. Called Fragile Alliance, the game starts with all the online players on the same criminal team with the same objective (rob the bank, get the money, etc.). When players are killed, they spawn as police officers trying to stop the robbery. If a criminal kills another criminal, he becomes the traitor (with a big price on his head). The objective then is to finish the game with the most money, whether from stealing it (criminal), recovering it (police), or back-stabbing (traitor). Each game starts as a team mission and eventually turns into a vicious free-for-all. Fragile Alliance is diabolical and fun, although online friends have a tendency to band together to cheat. And with only four levels, though, it has limited appeal.

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men will probably be forgotten in time, along with every other shoddy, broken, or average shooting game. This is too bad, because there really were some great ideas in this game. It certainly had the potential to be great, but story and mood can’t cover up weak gameplay. In the right situation, this game can be an engaging way to explore some dark themes. In most cases, it is too frustrating or broken to warrant your time.
www.kaneandlynch.com

Nick Hackett

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