Difficulty:

Easy

The Bottom Line:

"Uninspired"

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Kane and Lynch: Dead Men review by Simon a.k.a. [TheDevilDweller]
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*****Introduction*****
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The Good:
Club Level

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The Bad:
Old generation visuals – Busted controls – terrible A.I. system – Weak story – Bad Voice acting – Frame rate problems – No online co-op mode

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"It feels like you're in the middle of the gunfight in Heat" That's what it says on the front cover, and all I have to say about that is… yeah right.

From the creators of the Hitman series, I was expecting something more. The bad visuals, busted and frustrating controls, terrible A.I. system both from your enemies and allies, poor physics, a weak story, and unappealing characters, makes Kane and Lynch one big joke.

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*****The Plot*****
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Story:

You play Kane who has been sentenced to death and awaits transportation to death row. Kane lost his two-year-old son in a tragic accident when he found Kane's service gun. Kane's wife blames him for the death of their son and leaves him. Kane has not see his daughter since she was five. Many years later Kane becomes a member of the7; the most powerful clan of Mercenaries in the world. After a mission in Venezuelan that went badly wrong, Kane was caught and sentenced to death for killing 25 Venezuelan citizens. On his transportation to death row, Kane meets Lynch who is also sentenced to death, when suddenly the police transportation was attack by an unknown group. You are giving a weapon where you have to fight your way through the police and escape. Later Kane finds out that the organisation that he was once a member of, planed the whole attack because they believe that Kane hid the money from the last job, and they want it back. Kane's wife and daughter have been taken hostage while Kane is being blackmailed into retrieving the7's money. Lynch's purpose is to keep any eye on Kane, but you later find out that he's a mad schizophrenia and that he's more trouble than he's worth.

The story could have been somewhat interesting, but it's just dull, shallow and uninteresting. The characters have no feeling and you couldn't care less what happens to them.

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*****The Graphics*****
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Overall Design:

The graphics are quite poor, for a next generation game anyway. Kane and Lynch was released late November 2007, and your probably thinking that for a 2007 release, Kane and Lynch may have looked decent, but no. Compared with other games like Uncharted, Call of Duty 4 and Assassin's Creed (which were released within the same month), the visuals in Kane and Lynch are somewhat last generation standards. Even the Hitman Trilogy looks better than Kane and Lynch, and that was a last generation game. You probably thinking that I'm being a bit unfair, but when something looks poor, it's poor. If it were a PS2 or an original Xbox game, than things would have been different… well, with the visuals anyway.

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*****The Game-Play*****
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Game-Play:

The game-play, well what can I say… it's poor. The controls feel stiff and quite frustrating to navigate and to aim. Grenades always bounce away from where you want them to land. The hit detection is very bias, most of the time you'll aim at an enemy's head and nothing happens. Enemy and ally A.I. system is very poor. Your allies get in your way almost all the time and hardly ever give you any support even when you ask for it, and allies don't revive fallen allies. Enemies take cover in the stupidest places that ether doesn't really cover their whole body or next to an exploding barrel or vehicles (that blows up when you shoot them). Enemies will more often then none run straight towards you giving you the opportunity to take them down easy, or they'll refrain from cover and stand in clear view in open gunfights. Taking cover is probably the most redundant thing in the game. The cover system happens at random. The way it works is if and when you are near a flat surface, you'll automatically take cover on that surface. The problem with this is, sometime is just doesn't work. You'll find yourself desperately trying to get into cover to avoid enemy fire when sometimes it just doesn't work, causing you to ether crouch and hope the enemy fire want hit you, or run in like a madman. Sometimes even when your in cover, you can still get hit from enemies. Enemy snipers are probably your biggest enemies in the game, because they're so bloody annoying. When a sniper is aiming at you, the bottom left of the screen indicates the snipers aim, when that happens you basically have to run all around avoiding the sniper and get into cover. More often than none, you want realise a sniper is aiming at you until you get hit. When you take to much damage, you fall to the ground wounded and you have to wait until one of your squad members revive you with an adrenaline boost. If you keep getting wounded, and receive to many adrenaline injections in a short period of time, you'll die from an overdose. When your squad member are wounded, it seem that you're the only one that has to revive them, because other member don't feel the need to revive their own A.I. teammates. Kane and Lynch can be play in co-op with you and a friend, but only on split screen. Co-op, is always good, even if the game is poor and it's better playing Kane and Lynch in co-op because it takes you away from the terrible A.I. teammates. Unfortunately I could not find anyone with the patients to sit through the whole game with me, but from the few level I played in co-op, it's was not bad, but the game was still poop.

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Online Multiplayer:

In addition to the main story, there is an online multiplayer feature called Fragile Alliance, but good luck trying to find a game… why would you anyway.

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*****The Sound*****
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Sound Design:

The sound effects are just decent. The voice acting is pretty decent and could have even been something good if not for the terrible script writing. It feels to me that the writers cared more about have lots of unnecessary language than anything else. I have no problems with bad language (believe me) but in Kane and Lynch it's like F this, F that, what the F you F'ing doing, F, F, F, F. There's a time and place for bad language and Kane and Lynch just goes way too far.

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*****Life Value*****
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Lifespan / Replay Value:

Kane and Lynch will last about 7 - 9 hours but once it's done… it's done.

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*****Editor's Final Thought*****
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Overall Kane and Lynch is just a boring disappointment because I thought it would have been a great game, or should i say it should have, being from the same creators as Hitman. Instead we got a game with broken controls, bad visuals, terrible A.I. system, and a boring average story. It is playable, and it's not the worst game in this generation, but it is a slightly avarage game and it's not a game I would really recommend.

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*****FINAL OVERALL SCORE*****
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Story - 4/10
Online Multiplayer - 3/10
Life Value - 4/10

Presentation - 5/10
Graphics - 5/10
Atmosphere - 5/10
Game-Play - 5/10
Controls - 4/10
Sound Effects - 6/10
Concept - 5/10

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***** EDITOR'S OVERALL THOUGHT SCROE: 5/10 *****
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Kane and Lynch: Dead Men review by Simon a.k.a. [TheDevilDweller]
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