My actual score came out to 8.7, but oh well. This game is good folks. Read on to find out why.
Personally, I can't see how anyone can say this game looks bad. This game reminds me of Prince of Persia in this respect. In PoP, you didn't have a whole bunch of stuff cluttering the environments. You just didn't need it. Moreover, you didn't miss it.
Look, I'm running on MAX settings with a 5 year old machine. These new games that keep coming out month after month, that my machine would freeze up on - the reason I can play this game on MAX settings and not those is because those games put so much clutter on your screen, it's rediculous. This game has a near perfect balance in this department.
Sound - 8.3
The voice acting is top notch. Michael Ironside once again lends his talents to the video game world as Lynch, which is... well... he's just getting really good at it now. The voice of Kane - I'm sure it isn't him, but every now and again, I would swear it's Ray Liota, which isn't a huge stretch since he's done VO before as Tommy in GTA:VC. Either way, the actor is great.
Cursing? Yes... it's in there. Is it too much? Well, I don't really curse all that much, personally, so any substantial amount is too much for my tastes. But I can tell you this. I've heard far worse from any number of Joe Pesci's movies, and the only one that was ever really remotely insulting was J.F.K. I still liked the movie though.
The rest of the sound is pretty good I guess. I think they could have used some music a little more, but I just enjoy ambience when I play games.
Gameplay - 7.8
This one is tricky. Some of the gameplay just doesn't make sense, and some of it is really great. First of all, the whole "Group Tactics" stuff, while I really enjoy in some games, just didn't seem to fit correctly in this game. It was almost like an afterthought. I mean, it really doesn't even need to be there. Sure, it's cool that it's there, and it's useful, but even on the Morphine setting, I hardly use it or even need it.
That aside, this game reminds me of Freedom Fighters (it would, naturally - IO Interactive and all). FF is possibly one of my all time favorite games. It just had everything you could want from a vido game, for it's time, and still offers some of the best gameplay around. This game resembles that quite a bit, but some of the depth is missing. That isn't such a big deal though, since hopefully this is only the first of a series. It can only get better, and it wasn't a bad start.
Oh yeah, one last thing about the save function. You really don't need a QuickSave function in this game, and really, I don't like quick save functions anyhow. What I DO wish they would have put more thought into, however, is where they initiate their Autosaves. Autosaving before a big upcoming fight - OK. Autosaving before a big upcoming fight.... BEFORE the cutscene that you can't skip - NOT OK! Trust me on this - you're going to die. In some circumstances, you're going to die a lot. The last thing I want to do, is sit through 30-45 seconds worth of cutscene, just to die again in 5 sconds, thereby having to go through the cutscene again.
Value/Fun Factor - 8.3
It's a quality game that will either hit or miss your tastes. I am the kind of guy who will like a game based on what it was trying to do, and how well it pulled it off. I don't limit myself to one genre of video games, and I don't compare genres, i.e. FPS attributes to RPG's.
Kane and Lynch tried to do one thing - make a cool game with cool characters in a cool story line, all of which inspired by Michael Mann films. It succeeded. And you know what? It's just cool.
Tilt - 10
... Because this game needs the credit it deserves, instead of being ruined by idiots crying about stuff that doesn't even matter.
Overall - 8.7
You can trust this review from a gamer who knows games, and doesn't judge a game because it is or is not Halo or WoW.