By Shane Willoughby at thegamingliberty.com
It’s something of a miracle that the Kane & Lynch franchise has managed a sequel. Given the acrimonious shitstorm that surrounded the original game following THAT now infamous Gamespot review (where a reviewer was fired allegedly on the basis that his unfavourable review caused the publisher to pull advertising from the site), Eidos and IO Interactive have taken a real calculated risk with Dog Days.
Dog Days is IO’s attempt to take charge of the franchise and justify its existence after a pretty average start, compounded by contention and debate. The only debate Dog Days raises, however, is whether or not the developers should bother with a third Kane & Lynch at all, as the game fails to propel the franchise forward, sacrificing gameplay for art direction and in turn leaves you with yet another standard shooter. Simply put, K&L 2 is not the game it should have been.
Even if the first game was panned by many, one thing it did do well was characterisation and Dog Days does a valiant job in restoring the thuggish, demented and trigger-happy psyche of two of this generation’s most memorable characters. Kane and Lynch are sociopathic hardened criminals on the cusp of what’s right and decent in this life and yet you can’t help but rally around their indulgent need for wrongdoings as they attempt to tear Shanghai a new one.
Thankfully, someone has thought of the children
It’s here where we first meet ‘former’ sinner James Seth Lynch. Sure, he still dips in and out of illegal activity but he has gone some way to cleaning up his act. The same can be said for Adam ‘Kane’ Marcus, although the boys can’t resist the urge to hook up one last time to potentially pull off an arms deal that would ensure that their seedy criminal ways would be done for life.
What follows is one of the shortest and rushed single player campaigns I have played of late, clocking in at around five hours and devoid of any of the flawed but interesting action sequences that made its predecessor Dead Men just about bearable.
You’ll only spend about five hours shooting up Shanghai and although it can actually be quite fun in some places, these moments are few and far between, leaving a repetitive, clumsy shooter that does nothing that hasn’t been done before and better. The shooting mechanics are sloppy, there’s an over reliance on taking cover, and some potentially great moments are lost as a result. Running amuck with your buddy and shooting cops and gangsters senselessly should be so much more fun than this. There’s gameplay in there, but it’s lazy and laboured. You kill people, cover, kill more people, and move on to the next area of cover. That’s it in a nutshell. It’s violent as hell and completely soulless.
Unique art style
Visually, Kane & Lynch 2 comes into its own with a unique aesthetic and some interesting and risky art direction. The game looks like it was filmed on a battered old video camera with every kill, every explosion, every dead body and every bullet corrupted by huge pixels, distorted images and faded colours. The entire game plays this way, so if you’re a fan of retina-burning lens flare and shaky-cam films like Cloverfield then you’ll love this. It’s different art style and executed quite well. The game’s visuals, much like Kane and Lynch themselves, are gritty, coarse and a little rough around the edges.
The game’s online experience is actually quite fun and definitely worth your time, especially given how short the game’s single player is. Fragile Alliance offers a layered and comprehensive multiplayer experience that rights some of the single player game’s wrongs. Mind you, it doesn’t exactly redeem the overall experience. Co-op is also worth a go, if you think it’s worth your time and effort.
Kane & Lynch 2: Dogs Days is a disappointingly hollow and mediocre experience and certainly not the innovative step forward for the franchise that it should have been. It’s not exactly a step backwards either, but more a static experience that doesn’t really do anything that we haven’t seen before. Dog Days falls short and this is a shame, particularly given how excellent the art direction is. If indulgent violence, bad language and obscenity are your thing, you might well make the best the Kane and Lynch’s latest but if not, you might just curse yourself for picking it up to begin with.
Format: Xbox 360, Playstation 3; Developer: IO Interactive
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