Masem’s Gaming Blog

Kane and Lynch: Dead Men, developed by IO-Interactive and distributed by Eidos, attempts to take those movies where the criminals are the protagonists such as Heat, Crank, and The Usual Suspects, and make a video game based off a highly cinematic experience. Unfortunately, the game falls flat in several areas: the story itself is too fast-paced and never stopped to help us gain insight into the characters, the gameplay itself is subpar save for a couple of interesting features, and while the game has an interesting multiplayer mode based on psychological experiments, there’s several implimentation problems that makes it much less exciting than it is on paper.

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Story: B

The game opens with Kane, a con-man that used to work for the organized crime gang called The7 and having been caught, has been in prison for several years. However, while being transferred to a prison when suddenly the transfer truck is ambushed, and Kane is allowed to escape. He quickly learns this was planned by The7 – they want Kane to retrieve goods that he had stolen from them before by robbing the bank they are stored at, and they have his wife and daughter as hostages to make sure he gets the job done. Furthermore, they virtually shackle him to Lynch, a rather wild man that goes into crazed rampages if he doesn’t take his medicine. Kane manages to pull off the heist, but learns that only half of what should be there is present, leading him and Lynch on a hunt to find where the missing loot disappeared to, all while trying to hide the fact that it was missing from The7.

While the story is presented as a crime drama such as the movie Heat, it is definitely lacking the elements that make it a really good story. There’s almost no point where the game makes you feel sympathetic towards Kane or Lynch, beyond the fact that Kane has a family that he hasn’t seen for years. There’s almost no cool-down point in the story: all cut scenes are done in-engine, and even in loading screens between levels, there’s character dialog that helps to connect the scenes – for example, after his initial escape, Kane’s hooded and placed in a back of a van, leading to the black loading screen while you hear him try to figure out what’s going on with the van’s driver. But while this helps to keep all the action running together in one long shot, it does not help from the standpoint of giving us much character background – even those crime drama movies will pause for a bit to help build character. Nor couldn’t this be done in a game like this – I consider even the stills/comic approach of Max Payne to have given me a reason to care for Max during the game. It’s not that this isn’t necessary a bad plot for a movie (which, as I understand, will be made for this), but that from the interactive side, I’m give no reason to really put myself into the game. Beyond that, the plot is very mature (language and content), and the voice actors are all very good in their roles.

Gameplay: C+

Kane and Lynch plays pretty much as a standard third-person shooter. As Kane, you need to lead your team (Lynch and larger groups later in the game) through each level while taking down forces that want to stop you. The game is pretty straight forward, and almost to a bit of being a bit too klunky. While you can take cover behind walls and columns, and then use either blind fire or partial cover aiming, the “sticking to walls”part seems very hit or miss and thus being able to pull off these types of covered fire was not very effective. You can only carry two weapons though you can pick up weapons you find on the ground, and if you run low on ammo, you can race to a nearby squad member to get more. Each of the game’s level is a follow-the-checkpoint deal, and though a couple do try to reuse the elements, most are primarily linear in nature.

One aspect of the game that is done well but woefully underused is the control of your other members in your party. The shoulder buttons cycle between each member, and once selected, you can have them follow you, target their fire at a specific position, or take a position behind a wall or other obstacle. Holding down the three buttons for these actions sends the command to the entire group. These scheme reminds me very much of what was done in Band of Brothers for controlling your squad, but the ability to individually direct members without too much difficulty allows you to perform rather elaborate flanking maneuvers, provide covering fire, or the like without making the game into a tactical RPG. Unfortunately, the number of situations where such precise control of your team is necessary are few and very far between. Most of the time, you either can make it through areas with your entire team following you, or you can send them up ahead to provide covering fire while you make your way forward. There is a need to keep your team close together – if a teammate goes down, you’ll need to get to their side to administer a shot of adrenaline to revive them; similarly should you fall, a teammate will try to work their way to use to do the same. However, adrenaline can be easily overdosed, so once you’ve taken one shot, you’ll need to wait for a short amount of time before you can take another shot, which means you need to keep your head down and carefully progress forward, even making sure your team stays out of danger to prevent you from having to expose yourself to recover them. The other aspect of the control scheme is that by taking all of the face buttons and the shoulder buttons with these squad control actions, switching between your weapons is now done by pressing the right trigger and using a limited weapon selection screen to pick out what you want. This makes it rather hard to switch rapidly between your main machine gun and your pistol (your two primary weapons). I don’t know off hand what they could have different beyond possibly replacing the thumbclick actions to weapon switching, but it is still a good idea in theory.

Another nice aspect is that certain attacks or events, when they occur, will create a inset image of that event from a different perspective as to help you quickly see what’s happening. Notably, when you are targeted by snipers, you get to see what they’re seeing through their scope, allowing you to quickly find cover, then to turn your team on the sniper’s position knowing the direction he was shooting from. You’ll also see when a team member falls in battle from overhead as to get an idea of where they are, though this state is also indicated with an on-screen icon indicator. The concept is nice and does have some cinematic flair to it without detracting from the main screen too much.

Unfortunately, the game itself lacks a significant challenge and only on a couple points in specific levels did I feel challenged, and exactly one point where I did have to spend a decent amount of time trying to get through the section. The enemy AI is woefully underskilled, providing little challenge save when in numbers, and even then, they will tend to gravitate towards specific points that make it easy to pick off. Ammo and weapons are plentiful, and once you gain more than two members on your crew, the game is almost too easy. The times I was challenged was basically when they added an assault helicopter to the mix which was rather agile and accurate with its fire, but even then, once it got into a pattern, taking it down was a cinch. The single player game breezes by, taking me maybe 6 hours to complete in a 2 day period. There are two different endings, but the choice to opt between them occurs at the very end of the game so one needs not replay the entire game to see it, and other achievements (such as avoiding shooting any innocent people in a nightclub raid) are also easily accomplished. There are three difficulty levels, but if the second hardest is as easy as I found it to be, I’d figure that the most difficult challenge isn’t really all that hard.

Another place where the game misses the boat is the implimentation of co-operation, either as having to play through the game or the actual co-op playing of the game. I’ve noted that while the squad commands are great, they are rather underused in the game, and it would have nicer to see having to rely on ordering Lynch around to key spots while you (as Kane) got through certain areas. One can play the main campaign in co-op with a friend, but only split screen and only on the same console, which is amazing that there is no online co-op. I see nothing in this game as challenging as, say, Gears of War from representing state or networked information, so the lack of online co-op support seems to be a poor decision.

Kane and Lynch’s multiplayer, called “Fragile Alliance”, is likely the most notable part of this game, and is an interesting twist on the so-called “Prisoner’s Dilemma” with a bit of the popular “zombie/infection” gameplay type that many multiplayer games have. Each player starts as part of a group of robbers ready to case a joint such as a mall or bank. The goal for the “team” is to defeat any resistance by the AI guards, collect valuables by standing near them for a bit, then making their way to the pickup point. Generally, all the loot that is safely taken away from the crime scene is shared between all surviving members. If someone is killed by the guards, they’ll respawn as a guard and can attempt to defeat the robbery, earning “finders fees” for any valuables they recover. Where the twist comes in is that as a robber, you can opt to kill a teammember, immediately gaining all the loot they’ve collected, though now you are considered a “traitor”. If you can escape with that loot, you keep it all for yourself. Thus, to end up with the largest score, turning against your team can be a very rewarding goals. However, the person that you killed will now gain a special bonus should they then get their revenge on you once they’ve respawned as a guard, in addition to the fact that the rest of your team may not like your rather large take.

The concept is certainly interesting, but there’s some design issues with the mode that really doesn’t allow it to live to its full potential. For one, the money you collect can be used to spend on weapons prior to the next round – this itself is a good idea, but the limitations in what you can buy (basically between 3 “packages” of weapons) and the relative cost compared to what you can easily take in during combat is out of balance (these package cost no more than $100,000, but you can easily get $1,000,000 without too much effort during looting). I think if there was more variation, including weapons that would have taken several rounds of wealth to acquire, this concept would have become much strategic. The game is also hampered by the rather weak AI, making the initial part of the round (clearing out the resistance) rather easy – I wonder if it would have made sense to have at least one person start as a guard as to increase the difficulty to start. I would love to see someone take this concept and make more of a complete multiplayer game around it – it definitely has potential, but presently just lacks guts to make it a long-term enjoyable mode as shipped with the game.

Value/Replayability:C+

The overall single player campaign is woefully short and while offering a few difficulty levels, really doesn’t have enough meat in it to want me to replay it again. I will say that the multiplayer idea is a good one, but needs a few tweaks; furthermore, I feel that the online offerings for this mode will not be anywhere close to the popularity of Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4.

Graphics: B-

This game does not feel like a next-gen game from the graphics. Primarily this seems to be do to the lack of bump mapping on a lot of textures – some have it (primarily on the main characters facts) while other surfaces (most of the larger ones) lack it, and as a result, the game looks like a last-gen PS2/Xbox 1 game. There are destroyable surfaces, particularly those that are used for cover, and the destruction does seem realistic, but there are several times that when debris is flying, the game hits a major graphical slowdown, something that I can’t believe should be occurring for a game that doesn’t seem to be pushing the graphical limits of the console.

There’s also something else missing, that being the feel of what these crime drama movies are. They tend to be dark and feel like in tight quarters, even when out in the open in daylight. Within Kane and Lynch, I never felt any sort of claustrophobia, save for one possible level (a darkened nightclub), and found that in generally, all the colors were nice and bright – maybe appropriate for the environment but really didn’t convey a feeling of this being a dark story to me. As a comparison, there’s a point where you are driving through a city tunnel with cops on your tail, just like the opening of The Darkness – despite similar concepts, these two scenes played out completely differently for me: The Darkness one was adrenaline-filled and had me catching my breath at the number of close calls (despite the fact I wasn’t playing it), while the one in Kane and Lynch felt like a snails pace with no real sense of danger because of how open and lit the tunnel was. Something is definitely off in this game with respect to the image it is trying to portray.

Audio: B+

Gunfire and other sound effects are pretty decent, and the voice acting seems well appropriate for their parts. Music is limited in the game but is really nothing special.

Overall: C+

Kane and Lynch: Dead Men is a rather disappointing experience based on what the promise of the game was prior to release. While there are some aspects of the single player game that do work albeit in very few situations, and that the multiplayer concept is very interesting but suffers from some implimentation flaws, the overall game is rather weak. Perhaps the developers were too focused on creating a game that replicated a crime movie too much without considering the elements that make crime movies good, particularly strong characterization to help us empathize with the characters. The short length of the single player campaign without much replayability makes this a definite renter or used purchase.

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