Eidos is actually fortunate that Gamespot gave their game a 6.0/10.0. They are more generous than I. Granted I haven’t done the multiplayer, which is said to have a little bit of value if nothing else but for being unique. I completed the co-op campaign, and really the game itself is almost solid it just seems unpolished.
Kane was part of a group of gangsters known as The7 till he allegedly betrayed them, stealing some sort of loot they were after and abandoning them to their deaths. He claims he thought they were already dead, and the game doesn’t reveal anything further. The first level is a prison break, as The7 bust Kane out of prison to send him with a psychopath watchdog, named Lynch, to go and reclaim whatever it was The7 had once obtained and Kane had hidden.
Kane and Lynch is an over-the-shoulder, third-person shooter, similar to other recent entries like Gears of War and Army of Two. The more you get shot the darker your view becomes until you can take cover to shake it off. If you, one of your crew members or Lynch goes down, you have a few seconds to get to them and administer an adrenaline shot to revive them.
One frustrating point is that the crew members that fight with you don’t listen very well. I don’t know how many times we would try to tell a guy to stay put and he would go running into the heat of battle. Every five seconds we would put his marker back out of the fray to stop his suicidal attempts. Normally I wouldn’t care if my artificially unintelligent sidekicks kill themselves, but in Kane and Lynch, if they fall and need revived and you don’t revive them, you lose, and have to start from the last checkpoint. Checkpoints are fairly frequent through the games 18 stages, but going back to them as a consequence of bad AI isn’t cool.
Walking the city streets after breaking from prison, the first thing I noticed was the extreme lack of detail. It looked like one of the 720p efforts from a last generation Xbox title. Later environments eventually got more detailed and realistic, but character animations did not. People are almost scary looking in the way they move and are textured. They just look a little behind industry standard.
Playing in co-op, was fun enough, there were only a few points of frustration. We finished it in one and a half sessions, probably 6-7 hours.
They didn’t really leave it open for a sequel and I hope Eidos chooses not to, or now that SquareEnix owns them, hopefully will put their foot down.
Shooter/Third Person Shooter
Dialogue/Voice Acting 4/5
Enemies 5/10
Fun 5/15
Graphics 1/5
Hit Detection/Aim 5/10
Level Design 4/10
Music 1/5
Play Control 4/10
Replayability 2/10
Sound 3/5
Story 6/10
Weapons 4/10
Overall Score 44/100