Games I'm playing.....Part 4

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
Again, if you haven't heard about this game, two words: mercy killing. Kane and Lynch has the dubious honour of being famous for the wrong reason: bad publicity. It was one of the biggest stories around the end of 2007 when Gamespot editor-in-chief Jeff Gertsmann was fired amidst a flurry of rumours suggesting his scathing review of Kane and Lynch was the cause. What followed was nothing short of a mass gaming uprising against Gamespot (at the time recently aquired by CNET), with many commentators rightly distressed at the fact that advertising revenue seemed to trump truethfull reviewing in the corridors of CNET's latest aquisition. There was no hiding the fact that the pages of Gamespot were thickly laden with Kane and Lynch advertising - had that very rough line between the expectations of an advertiser and the rights of the punters to transparency been crossed? Gamespot and Gertsmann tried to dodge the issue through ambiguous press releases but it has become widely accepted (and recently confirmed by Gertsmann) that the review was the cause of his demise.

For those that haven't seen the original review (which was quickly pulled of Gamespot, edited and reposted in a more appeasing form) have a look below:

I would immediatly like to dismiss a lot of what he says as poppy-cock. Jeff must have been having a bad day, maybe the office politics had finally gone to his head, maybe he just got a little self-absorbed and needed a rant - who knows? After all the negativity in his review, he gave the game a 6/10 - hardly the shocker one could have been forgiven for expecting.

I booted the game up last week and chose the single player campaign, I had begged Brenda to play the co-op campaign but she was still more than a little miffed at my suggestion that Lynch had probable cause for offing his wife and then listed a few of Brenda's annoying little habits as reason why.

As it turns out Kane is a mercenary who was part of an organisation called The7, who have reason to believe he disappeared with a rather large sum of money that was intended to be more equally split. Lynch, is a psycopathic murderer who killed his wife in a fit of rage and is on a concoction of pills to keep himself from losing it completely. In contrast to Jeff's assertion, both characters are likeable enough. The games starts of with Kane and Lynch on their way to death row when a deftly organised 'break-out' occurs, orchastrated by The7 to get their hands on Kane and thereby their loot. The story starts as a hunt for the money to return to The7, then revenge and some more revenge. I've not yet finished the game but I must be close to the end, so I am unsure if things will change.

Graphically the game is decent, this is no eye-poppingly beautiful second coming, but it certainly isn't what I'd call ugly. The game is a third person shooter, and right from the start you are expected to shoot your way out a circling mess of local law enforcements finest. I found the controls a little slow on it's default setting so I quickly increased sensitivity and it instantly improved my accuracy on quick shots. As with Jeff's assertion, I found the AI to be incredibly stupid. Cops will often just stand in one place and wait for you to empty your clip into them. They often crouch, as if behind cover, but there isn't any! Don't be fooled into a false sense of security though, the hit detection in this game is to put it lightly, screwed. I've often had the reticule bulls-eye for a head shot and emptied a clip into thin air - one can expect over a distance for accuracy to be negatively adjusted, but this happens over short distances too.

Talking about difficulty the game gives you three options - aspirin, codeine and morphine - an interesting alternative description for normal, hard and insane. I chose to play on morphine, which is difficult. The game uses an autosave feature at the end of each mission so it's best not to quit half way, you'll start at the beginning again, even though you reached check points within the mission. I personally hate that. The game employs a cover system with varying degrees of success. Snapping in and out of cover is hit and miss affair, it's done by manouvering towards cover and waiting for the game to suck you in, often this doesn't happen and then a quick left-right of the anologue stick will get the job done. Not all cover is impervious to damage, so realistically hiding behind a wooden stall is not going to provide unlimited protection. Often though when trying to shoot someone from the cover position your character ends up shooting the cover instead, requiring you to break free and take your enemy on in the open.

Besides Lynch, you are often helped by other criminal elements which allow you to use your limited squad based commands of 'follow me', 'go there' and 'kill that'. Again the AI is disappointing, your sqaud members will often just get in the way of enemy gunfire and go down, requiring you to risk life and limb to administer a reviving dose of adrenalin. This is also incedentally your saving grace in many a situation. There is no health bar but getting hit enough sees your screen turning red and losing colour, take any more hits and you will go down. This is when having one of your squad close to you is necessary as they will have a few seconds to administer your dose of adrenalin and revive you. If they don't get there in time you will die - and don't go down too often as you will die of an adrenalin overdose should not enough time have elapsed since your last injection. The trick here is to always have someone close by, as your guys will not get to you if they are in the thick of battle or have to cross a path riddled with gunfire.

Kane and Lynch see's you fighting it out in an array of intersting locations, from a bank to a prison to a war-torn city to the jungle. The change of locations keeps the game fresh and you're never left feeling like it's just one gun fight after the next which in some games just sees you going through the motions. I am really enjoying the pace of the title and the storyline is engrossing enough to keep you interested. The gameplay is slightly flawed with little problems here and there but on the whole it's a very fun game. I am sure further additions to the franchise will be more polished which should turn this into a well supported series. The co-op mode should be lots of fun too, it's not an Xbox Live! co-op though so it's a split screen, single console affair but it should put an interesting spin on the story if you're playing the Lynch character. The multiplayer is called Fragile Alliance and is an exciting twist on standard MP gameplay. All players team up to rob a bank and collect as much money as they can and then escape. Police bots are provided to bring your heist to an end but once you've collected the spoils the fun really begins - any one of your team mates can turncoat and kill you for you loot. This puts such a spin on things it really is lots of fun, if you're the subject of sabotage you can get your own back as you respawn as a cop! Good game.

-RE: Gamer