A game that has great ideas for the setting, atmosphere, premise, and gameplay...but botches nearly all of them.
As many GameSpot users are aware, the departure of Jeff Gerstmann was surrounded by controversy, and centered around his review of Kane & Lynch, which he labeled as "ugly."
Too keep matters short, he wasn't kidding.
It's hard to talk about Kane & Lynch without immediately starting to bash the game by pointing out everything it does poorly. Unfortunately, it's going to happen, so brace yourself.
Story/Presentation:
The premise of a newly created partnership between a ruthless mercenary and a mentally unbalanced murderer in a No Holds Barred action title sounds absolutely fantastic, almost to the point of wondering how the Hell Io Interactive managed to screw it up.
There's a story here, but you soon won't care, and many players won't even bother to pay attention past the 2nd level. Kane is a man who betrayed a group called "The7," with the latter hiring Lynch - a fellow inmate of Kane's - to assist in breaking him out soley for the purpose of Kane being able to "set things right." Kane's family is held hostage, he's apparently made enemies (who are FAR to eager to forgive him in less than 3 seconds, even when he murdered everyone they know), Lynch has....issues...and that about wraps it up. Oh yeah, there's something about betrayal, revenge, yadda yadda yadda, but you won't care.
The biggest issue with the story is the lack of solid presentation. Much of it is told through audio played during load times. It's a nice distraction, but entirely skippable, and entirely boring. There are hardly any cutscenes that tie the story together, and leave the player in the dark without a flashlight. For instance, there will be one mission where you and your crew head off to a Latin American warzone solely for the purpose of finding The7, but no clue as to why there's a war, why you're in it, and why an entire Army division is after you. Cutscenes and story ques here aren't just essential here...there's absolutely required. The handful of cutscenes there are, often focus on either each character's lack of trust in anyone, or their ability to use the F-word at will, and out of context.
Graphics:
Kane & Lynch is a good looking game, very reminiscent of Hitman mixed with Grand Theft Auto. The color palette is slightly washed, but there are lots of nice effects including tons of particles, destructible elements, and a very impressive depth of field. The character models are detailed enough, but movement and animations are clunky. Enemies are all pretty much the same throughout the game (cops, soldiers, men in suits w/ ties), but the environments are extremely diverse and full of detail - city streets, bank interiors, industrial gardens, war-torn Latin American ciities, and jungle warzones....they don't all make much sense, but at least they look good...and full of up to 100 NPCs at once, which impressive to say the least.
The visual weak points manifest themselves as extremely poor color palette, a weak lighting system, and clunky animations.
Sound:
There's something off with the game's scripting as the sound quality can unexpectly dip down to an abysmal level, resembling a chewed up audio tape. The voice acting is decent - I should say, they did the best with what they had. The lines, quite frankly, are awful. Gratuitous use of the F-bomb and other words works well if used in proper context. Responding to my squad order by shouting "**** you!!!" is NOT one of them. Anyone who's ears are physically harmed when hearing the F-word will cringe, and anyone who willfully uses the F-word on a daily basis will also cringe. It's lame, it's not funny, it's stupid...it just doesn't work.
But in fairness (for good or worse), the swearing out of context isn't the problem. The subject of each line is just bad. I understand that you're a rag-tag group of enemies uniting for a short-term common goal, but that doesn't mean that every order is responded by a comment of pure hate or displeasure, or that each character should just randomly piss and whine about however life screwed them over every time they speak. The lack of a decently and thoroughly explained story also hurts here.
Gameplay:
Picture Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter created using the Rage engine from a Grand Theft Auto game - it just ain't working like it could. The controls are very clunky, but the basics work. Aiming while zoomed in is a little too slow, and every gun seems to have an effective accuracy range of only 25 ft, but forgivable due to the amount of gunplay in the game.
The first issue is with the cover system. It's broken. Appearing to be animation-based, your character must have his body perpendicular to the object before he will snap himself to it...meaning that you will often have to pan the camera completely sideways 90-degrees - loosing sight of what you were shooting at! - just to have him properly take cover. It's very annoying, and many will simply result to hiding behind the abundant cover items rather than taking the actual cover position.
Squad controls are there, but also broken. You can order individually members to Attack a target, follow you, or hold a specific position. Having up to 4 other characters to babysit makes this set-up somewhat ineffective due to mico managing, and bad commands. Each command issued cycles to the next person, meaning you can't issue 2 orders to the same person in a row if there are other members present. It simplyfies things, but doesn't solve them. Your squad members also have the habit of "moving" to a new position by taking the worst possible path. What should've been a "go there in a straight line path, using cover" command turns into a "go there by making a large curve out into open territory, identifying yourself as a human bullet magnet" command.
The gunplay itself is fast-paced, and can be very satisfying, as long as you're not bothered at the moment by all of the game's short comings. Shootouts are always exciting, and they're right around every corner in Kane & Lynch. If you've ever watched "Heat" with Al Pacino, Robert Deniro, & Val Kilmer, and desired to play out the exit shootout of the bank heist, you'll get your chance....sure it's a blatant ripoff of an idea, but it's still awesome and done with style. Definately one of the highpoints of the game.
Multiplayer:
Kane & Lynch is made for the "Team Killer." The most drawing aspect - and the one to piss most players off the most - is the ability to work together as a team to secure loot...and then betray your teammates by killing them in order to better your score. Dead teammates respawn as cops, and matches quickly turn into a quest for revenge. This issue is a "online jerk-off's" wet dream as he'll have the opportunity to piss off everyone of his teammates, at his gain. The problem rears it's ugly head though, when people in matches will often simply betray people they don't know, or people who aren't affiliated with the majority of the team. This can often lead to instant deaths in your first 7-8 series of matches, which is bound to frustrate many casual gamers in to quitting the game right then and there.
Overall: 6.0
Kane & Lynch truly is an "ugly" game. There are too many problems that don't just outweigh the good points; they absolutely bury them. Each concept, no matter who intruiging or how awesome it may seem on paper, is just poorly executed. Still, it has it's moments in the sunshine, and if you're one of those people who just love to get into a game and start blowing people away regardless of the reason or method, then this is right up your alley. Hampered by a bad presentation, poor voice acting lines, clunky controls and a muliplayer that's bound to receive mixed reactions, Kane & Lynch feels like a game that would've been a AAA Title under a bigger and more experienced development house. If this were a Ubisoft title, no doubt, the game would be in a much better state.
For now, we'll just hope that the 2nd time around does the trick for Io/Eidos with Kane & Lynch 2.