Monday, October 4
Kane and Lynch: Dead Men was a game developed by Io Interactive and published by Eidos in 2007. It is a 3rd Person shooter that follows the main protagonist Kane and his tag along, Lynch.
Kane and Lynch: Dead Men was played using the PC version.
- Story -
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| Breaking out of jail, this is just the start. |
The story revolves around Kane and Lynch and a group called The7, along with Kane’s family, and what makes this story differ from most part is that Kane and Lynch are not ordinary heroes, but are actually criminals. The first thing that happens in the game is Kane (you) and Lynch breaking out of jail, or a police truck. From there some very questionable events will occur that will showcase that these two men are in no way heroes or even trying to be heroes. They are just less bad then the people they are out to get, The7.
The story takes you to several locations even though many of them fairly similar. There is the normal Unite
d States metropolis city, Tokyo, a Tokyo nightclub, Havana, a Venezuela jungle. At first the game is slightly numbing because of the standard boring location, but once past the U.S. city the game truly starts to shine. Each locale past the U.S. city has its own shining moments, from the glowing and seizure inducing nightclub and the tall skyscrapers of Tokyo to the massive battles of Havana or the huge jungle of Venezuela. Each new locations will make your jaw drop is some form of amazement.
d States metropolis city, Tokyo, a Tokyo nightclub, Havana, a Venezuela jungle. At first the game is slightly numbing because of the standard boring location, but once past the U.S. city the game truly starts to shine. Each locale past the U.S. city has its own shining moments, from the glowing and seizure inducing nightclub and the tall skyscrapers of Tokyo to the massive battles of Havana or the huge jungle of Venezuela. Each new locations will make your jaw drop is some form of amazement.
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| Where is the best looking place in the game? Tokyo. |
Beyond the interesting locales the game suffers a partially boring story. What happens in the story is without a doubt very new and different from other games, but it just doesn’t grab the player and entice them into thinking it is interesting. There is just not enough character attachment, except with the secondary character (Lynch) and unfortunately the story is primarily about Kane who is just far less interesting.
-- Story Score = 5 / 10
- Visuals -
Kane and Lynch: Dead Men was released in 2007 so the visuals are not entirely up to par. With that said the character models, especially Kane and Lynch, still look fantastic. The environments however… suffer. Aside from the certain moments in each locale the visuals for the places are decent. They look much, much better than last generation, but can’t hold up to 2010 visuals, which they were not meant to. But at those certain moments in each level you will think that this game is a game made just months ago because at each moment the game just looks spectacular.
The game will not disappoint visually unless the player is expecting state of the art visuals on an older game. For a game of 2007 it actually looks just incredible with character details and at key points in each level.
-- Visual Score = 7 / 10
- Game Play -
The game plays out like many recent 3rd person shooter, with a cover system. And it has a fairly heavy reliance on the cover system, depending on the difficulty. The gunplay from there is actually done quite well. You have all the mechanics like blind firing while behind cover and aiming and shooting is easy enough. There isn’t necessarily anything remarkable about the gunplay, but it isn’t bad either.
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| Go ahead teammate hide behind the breakable glass |
One slightly interesting, emphasis on slightly feature is the ability to order your AI teammates around. The orders are extremely basic with only 3 orders, which are regroup, attack person, or defend area. You teammates do a good enough job without being ordered, most of the time, that this ability isn’t the most useful, but is there is needed.
The two most helpful things your AI teammates (and also you) can do is reviving each other (which includes you) and also giving you ammo. So when you go down it doesn’t always mean game over. However if you go down to often then you can actually overdose on the drug bringing you back creating some uncertainty if you will make it or not. Now the whole ammo thing doesn’t always work. Your teammates will not always give you it, but for the most part they will.
The game play is average. It doesn’t do anything remarkable and it isn’t bad either at the same time. It is just a solid shooter and nothing more.
-- Game Play Score = 6 / 10
- Multiplayer -
The multiplayer feature of Kane and Lynch is an interesting one, as it is called Fragile Alliance. In it you go in to try and steal something of value (as a team in a sort of co-op fashion) and escape with it from the police. However because it is a Fragile Alliance one of the teammates may decide to betray the others at any time. This ends up altering how much money each player would get also. So if someone betrays and defects then the others can kill him, while defending themselves from the police. Now is one of the people was to die then they re-spawn as one of the cops and try to stop the robbers from escaping.
This multiplayer does sound interesting, unfortunately I was unable to play it since I played the PC version and absolutely no one plays online. So I cannot comment on how it plays out or score it, but figured it should be mentioned as a feature available.
-- Multiplayer Score = N/A
- Presentation -
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| A nightclub in Tokyo, a atmospheric and fun level. |
The one thing that makes Kane and Lynch really stand out is how it presents itself. One of these ways is in the cut scenes While the visuals of the game are mediocre the character models are actually quite nice so when it comes to cut scenes the game does it quite well. Along with that almost all the characters voice acting (a few minor characters not included) are very good. Kane and Lynch both have very good voice actors, which is great because they have the most dialogue in the game.
The voice acting is not the only good type of sound work. The music and audio is the game is just great, especially in the nightclub mission. The music fits almost all the scenes and flows quite well with the game. Along with that the guns and other objects in the game sounds great too. The audio, which includes music, voice acting, and all the sounds taken for objects and events in game, is quite possibly the best thing out of this game
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| What kind of shooter would this be if you sort of join the army? |
During the game play the game also presents itself well. Whenever you go down your character (if played solo it will be Kane) will go through a slight near death experience while you hear you life flash through your ears (because you don’t actually see anything). During this time your screen will blur and shake and you will start to hear voices. These voices can be from what was said during a cut scene, during the level, or just at anytime during the game.
The only problem with the presentation is that when the game ends you are immediately shown the credits. It isn’t even a long black screen before you get to them. So hopefully you have thought all about the ending and are ok with it because if not oh well the game is moving on. This is only a minor issue though and barely affects the game.
-- Presentation score = 10 / 10
Final Section Scoring
- Story = 5 / 10
- Visuals = 7 / 10
- Game Play = 6 / 10
- Multiplayer = N/A
- Presentation = 10 / 10
This is a game that if missed won’t feel like a loss or truly be one, but if played through it won’t feel like torture, but also nothing special. It has a few key moments that are interesting for a short period of time, but not enough to make this game good enough.
Average Total Scoring
- Average Score = 7 / 10
Total Time Spent To Complete Single Player
- Roughly 5 hours
As a final note I would like to add that the scoring system might not be entirely accurate. It is more in place as a brief overview of my experience, but if you want to fully know what I thought about the game then the actual written portion of the review must be read.
