An Underappreciated Gritty Game That May Suit One's Taste

One that has the most realistic storyline with compelling characters, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is a gripping video game that may deliver too much senseless swearing and mediocre replay value, but the dark humor and non-stop action are so cool that you may be willing to forgive Kane & Lynch's shortcomings.

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is the latest instalment from the creators of the Hitman series. You play as Kane, a death row inmate who was a member of an underground organization known as The7. The group was presumed dead and it was to believe that Kane murdered them and ran away with their money. As he is escorted to death's door, he is rescued by Lynch, a medicated psychopath hired by The7 to bring him back alive. Kane is shocked to find out that his members weren't actually dead but he knew they were furious at him for betraying the group. The7 has Kane's wife and daughter as hostages and will let them go only if Kane brings back all the money he has stolen. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the money with him and so he has to retrieve it back with the help of his new partner Lynch.

The game uses a standard third-person shooting angle and you can rotate the camera freely to observe your surrounding. The aiming may not be accurate but that gives the realism of the game and I think it works well. You can also focus your aim to have better shots at the enemy and speaking of which, the enemy AI is pretty decent too for they can hide, dodge and shoot you when in cover. You on the other hand, can flatten yourself at a corner and shoot at the enemies without exposing yourself. Kane can also order Lynch around to make him attack the desired targets or defend a particular area.

The soundtrack is pretty good too, composed by the one and only Jesper Kyd, the guy who worked with the Hitman soundtracks. The voice acting is pretty believable and memorable in some ways. Kane & Lynch are not the best of friends so they say things to each other which can be pretty funny and harsh at the same time. However, Kane & Lynch uses too much foul language which can really be annoying. Swearing once in a while is understandable but when the game uses it too much and too often, it gets really irritating later on. They scripts could've been better. The sound effect is probably the best element there is. Guns firing and blasting are so loud and powerful that it really feels like you're firing a gun. Never gets better than that.

The story of Kane & Lynch builds up as you progress further but it's disappointing to find out that the game is really short. There are 16 missions overall and it may sound quite a lot, but you can actually finish the game from lunch time to dinner time. The ending is not that great either and it was kind of a letdown to know how lame it is after all the tension and madness that was going on. Fortunately, there's the multiplayer and achievements that break up the disappointment. The multiplayer is called Fragile Alliance, and it is here where you put your skills to the test. Basically, you and three other players are to make a bank heist and steal as much money as possible. Players who walk out with the most money wins, but it's not as easy as it seems. If any of your members die, they will respawn as policemen, and their objective is to kill you and prevent you from walking away with the loot. It gets addictive.

Kane & Lynch comes in three formats, the PC, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 version. They all display beautiful and razor-sharp detailed graphics regardless in which platform you choose. The one I'm reviewing is the PC version. It can run on both Windows XP and Vista and they work pretty well but there are some bug in the game. It's important that you must have a good PC to run this game to ensure it runs smoothly. Otherwise, it lags like hell. Having said that, I did run into some problems when running this on my computer even though I have Vista, a 3GB RAM and an a brilliant graphics card. The problems I faced previously was that it lags so badly and everything was choppy and slow. The game crashed randomly and it keeps sending me back to the desktop with an error message. I solved this problem by restarting my Windows and set the graphics to low. It works fine now but it's disappointing that I had to play it in a low quality graphics so I couldn't fully appreciate it's gorgeous presentation. I would've bought the Xbox 360 version but it just so happen I don't have the console with me(Plus I don't want to face the red ring of death problem) and I'm kinda going mobile at the moment so the PC was the best bet.

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is a both hit and miss. There are some good stuff in here which will pull you into the experience and also bad stuff which prevents you to fully appreciate it. Overall, Kane & Lynch has an interesting concept to it which feels as if it's based on a hit action movie and it does that extremely well. I was really excited when the first announced the game a few years back and it was thrilling to see the trailers and screenshots as a sneak peek. However I was surprised to learn that the game didn't really hit big. My advise is to give it a try. If you think you'd like it, go ahead and buy/ rent this game. I did that, and it was awesome.

Score: 
Gameplay:  1.5 Star
Graphics:  1 Star
Sounds:  1.5 Star
Replay Value:  1.5 Star
Overall:  1.5 Star
Total: 3 out of 5 Stars