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Friday 11 January, 2008
Summary:
Kane and Lynch is a fairly standard third-person shooter. You play Kane, the beat-up, foul-mouthed mercenary with a dismal history. Your assignment is to retrieve a package (referred to as "it" throughout the game) in order to save your family and then be killed. However, being the low-life scum that you are, you take every available opportunity to foil the plans laid out for you.
Gameplay:
Perhaps the more interesting aspect of this game is that your character, Kane, is not a hero. In fact he is the exact opposite. He has probably raped, plundered and burned his way across the globe, and his only qualm so far is that he is running out of friends to bail him out. Going hand-in-hand with this is his fatalistic view throughout the game. He not only expects death at the end of it all, but even seems to embrace it. Most shooters these days have some sort of hero that is motivated to survive and help people; Kane doesn't give a shit about anyone but his daughter. He is perfectly willing to walk all over, use, kill or otherwise manipulate anyone who gets in his way to save her.
The levels are dismal and linear. Dismal, because throughout the game, particularly the last half, there is a strong sense of living on borrowed time. The end is in sight, and your only goal is to simply stay alive long enough to fulfill your objectives and then die. Although you have a small squad at your command during most of the game, you still feel like you're all alone. Even when you get reinforcements towards the end while you assault the Cuban capital (yes, you read right) the extras only seem to accentuate the fact that beyond your small band of cut-throats, everyone is out to get you.
Design:
The levels are also pretty linear. You start off at point A, work your way to point B, do some stuff, kill some dudes, then mosey on over to point C and the level ends. This is rather surprising because linearity is something that is becoming more and more rare. Games generally offer multiple avenues of progress, typically a stealthy way and the not-so-stealthy way. You are provided with a silent means of killing foes in Kane and Lynch, but the sneaking mechanic left something to be desired.
In one particular level, you are supposed to sneak down off a mountain to infiltrate a hacienda while at the same time preventing the guards from setting off warning flares. After my first few attempts at sneaking up behind one of the peripheral guards, and failing for the most part, I felt that rather than waste time trying to sneak up on guards, I should just get everyone into position and then open up with all the automatic weapons I had and hope that everyone dies before they get the chance to set off the flares. However, this lack of options wasn't really all that bad. It was a run-and-gun game.
That said, the levels are quite varied. I never once got the feeling, "Hey, didn't I just fight through this office complex?" You've got prisons, nightclubs, banks, another prison, the Cuban Capital (slightly ruined through artillery fire), jungles, a subway and more. All the levels are nicely designed with ample areas to hide behind (although the cover mechanic leaves something to be desired, see below).
As for fighting, the game borrows a good deal from Gears of War. The cover system could have been done better. The cover mechanic, when you near something that provides cover, will automatically snap you into cover. While this sounds like a great idea, I seemed to spend a great deal of time edging closer and closer to a corner waiting for Kane to step into cover-mode hoping I wouldn't die from being shot at. At the same time, when I decided it would be a good time to pop out of cover to move somewhere else, Kane would simply sit there and stare stoically at the ground. Moving in and out of cover seemed a bit ham-handed in general. Frankly, I feel they should have followed in the footsteps of Gears of War or Rainbow 6 Vegas and had a button keyed to "find cover" rather than allowing the computer to decide when to protect you.
Also borrowed from Gears of War is the health system, right down to the darkened screen. When you "die," you fall to the ground and you have to wait for a squadmate to come revive you. While you lie writhing on the ground, you are treated to a cacophany of voices, some yours, some not yours, yelling at you, in a flashback-ey sort of way. A nice touch I thought, but it just becomes monotonous towards the end. In addition to you dying, your teammates will cheerfully charge into the open and then become stricken with an overdose of bullets. It then falls to you to revive them. Apparently it is impossible for squadmates to administer adrenaline. Who knew. When this occurs, it feels like Rainbow 6 Vegas all over again: you curse your squadmates for running into enemy fire, then hope you dont get mowed down while you stab them in the chest.
I'll get back to the good things. There are little touches like your teammates cussing you out when you order them around to much. If you listen carefully, you can hear Lynch muttering to himself under his breath. The graphics are very pretty. The dialouge is amusing at times, and hardly heroic like some games. The conversations sound like they should be, a bunch of hardened criminals arguing about leadership, the best way to rob a bank, or just cussing each other out for doing stupid things (like slaughtering a lobby full of civilians with a shotgun).
By far, to me, the most appealing aspect is the dark nature of the game. I say this because frankly I am tired of games where you are some hero and and you save hundred, or thousands, or the world, or the universe, yadda yadda. For once its fun to just shank someone in the face and then mow down his friends as they come running out of the next room. Throughout the game you sort of dread the ending, because you know its not going to be happy, and you also know that a lots of people are gonna die. Of the endings, there are two, and neither is particularly appealing. The game is combat oriented, and not much else. Don't expect long stretches of holding your fire, because there really aren't any.
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