Kane & Lynch: Dead Men

"If you think Carnage and Venom are messed up. Wait til you see Kane and Lynch."

Kane and Lynch: Dead Men

You may have seen commercials for this game a while ago. Before Army of Two came out by EA. See Army of Two and Kane and Lynch were suppose to be release around the same time. Army of Two was sent to reviewers everywhere and they didn't like it so much. Therefore Army of Two was sent back for some tweaking.

This left Kane and Lynch to be the first on the market with a Co-op shooter for the next generation. The only question left. Is it good?

Enter in Kane and Lynch. The first scene opens up with Lynch asking Mr. Kane to duck his head as the two are in the back of a van. As the van crashes both men are left to escape. Then the fun starts.

The game has fairly simple shooter controls. Although you may want to adjust the sensitivity first before you do some real shooting. Guns in this game don't shoot striate. The shots will go around where you aimed as they should. No gun fires striate so that was a great move by the developers. Hold off on firing an automatic gun here though. The shots are almost guaranteed to hit anything but your target.

The story is wonderful and takes you to several locations around the world. Each place you visit looks stunning and pretty, especially in high-definition. While the sound maybe lacking in some places as in music, gun shots and people dieing sound complete. Glass shattering never sounded so good. Yet be warned though. The game has a mature rating for a reason. These sailors have some of the foulest of mouths.

The games AI will vary. Depending on difficulty of course, but if you don't take cover you are going to get that game over screen no matter what. There are two ways to prevent this. The first one is call adrenaline. This feature in the game allows any fallen comrade or yourself to come back to life. Be warned though, I more than a few times overdosed. This leads to some planning or as I found out just wait a little while after you get injected.

The second way to prevent death is use your allies. This Co-op game allows for you and a buddy to shoot up an endless amount of enemies. If you are unfortunate and have no one to play with the AI does a pretty good job. X, Y, B all gives orders your buddies. X giving the order to follow Kane. Pressing Y will give the order to attack. B will tell your troops to guard an area. It is to make note that it is much wiser to use the defend action rather than the attack action. While in defend your allies will look for cover then attack. While in attack mode the charge right in to the enemies.

Multiplayer has only one mode. Fragile Alliance which is you and your friends has to steal as much money as possible from a bank. It doesn't help the there are only four levels in total to pick from. The game starts with you and who ever you are playing with are stealing money. The catch is that you can turn on all your friends, become the traitor and attempt to escape the bank with the most money. Death in this mode will turn you into a cop who is tasked with stopping the robbers. This mode was ok it got kind of dull after awhile. That's probably because it's the only multiplayer mode.

The physics engine in the game is great. The engine is similar to that of the hit man series. Which if you look carefully you can see quite a few ads for hit man. This is because this game was made by the same guys. So if you love rag doll physics then you're going to have some fun here. The game though doesn't fully take advantage of the engine. There are few moments where you will see some rag doll physics. For instance shot an enemy in the head while he is running down some stairs and he will slide down the rest of it. Throw a grenade and what the bodies fly. One final word of wisdom. The game can be completed within a day. so you should pick carefully between renting the game and buying it.

If you like the sound of a medicated psychopath and a hard boiled mercenary hooking up to kill lots of people you'll like this game. It has a great story with some funny moments. The locations look amazing even with the blood on the wall. If you ever read spider-man comic books and found the venom and carnage characters awesome. These two will surely replace them.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/19/08

Game Release: Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (US, 11/13/07)