Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Surprisingly good"

Admittedly Kane and Lynch: Dead Men (K&L) will not be everyones' cup of tea. The main characters, both escapees from death row, are hardly most people's idea of video game heroes. This game is very much in the anti-hero mould and much is reminiscent of a Tarantino style movie: violence, extreme swearing (keep the kids well away when playing this one), blood-soaked action and convoluted plotting.

I had read the reviews of this and they were mixed and indeed the majority tended to suggested this might be a title to avoid. Mine was a bargain bin purchase so there was little to lose and sometimes the bargain bin delivers a surprise. K&L indeed delivered a surprise, at odds with many reviews, it is quite a good game.

K&L is a full on action game in the third person shooter genre. Beyond that it is also a tactical shooter, like Freedom Fighters from the same publisher I had recently, and belatedly, played. Controls for character and squad control are all reassignable and once memorised you can immerse yourself in this story of revenge and betrayal.

You play as Kane, a former mercenary who has doublecrossed a group of suited criminals called "The 7". Kane escapes from the prison van on his way to the chair with the assistance of Lynch, a violent psychopath who is entrusted with ensuring Kane recovers money belonging to The 7 within three days otherwise Kane's estranged wife and daughter will be killed by The 7. Kane and Lynch become allies after the execution of Kane's wife. There is more to the story but the emphasis, in game terms, is on a series of varied missions around the globe.

Neither protagonist is particularly likeable at the outset but, like Conflict: Denied Ops, you get to know more about them and backstory through the banter and eventually its becomes in effect a Hollywood buddy movie. Kane is a cold, realistic and ruthless operative and Lynch is the guy who will lose self control now and then but is always there, somewhat reluctantly, to back Kane.

The missions in K&L try to cover all those typical to the genre, taking an "everything and the kitchen sink" approach. As a result you do get a great range of missions, characters and environments tied together, albeit testing the limits of plausability, by the narrative.

The game begins with the player as Kane in the escape from the prison van and a number of large scale shoot outs with the police in the back alleys and streets of "somewhere" in downtown USA. The game assumes some familiarity with third person shooters as the "training" mission follows this. The training mission teaches the key mechanic of swapping weapons with, and giving "tactical" commands to, Lynch as well as abseiling. These mechanics can also be used with other squad members later on as the "team" grows and was used in the jungles of Venezuela to swap an assault rifle for a sniper rifle. The three squad commands are basically a point and click "engage that enemy", "go and defend there" and "follow me" type, similar to that in Freedom Fighters.

The next mission, also "somewhere" in downtown USA is a bank heist to recover The 7's money. Alas the money is not all in the safe and the heist goes all pear-shaped when Lynch kills the hostages. There is a major shootout outside the bank before the escape in the back of the van. This leads to the on the rails car (van) chase sequence with Kane peppering pursuing vehicles. The van breaks down and the police surround our boys who battle their way out and escape via a subway train.

Next it's off to the neon nights of Tokyo to a massive dance venue jammed packed with revellers moving to the techno beat. This swarm of moving people on the poorly lit nightclub floor has to be seen to be believed as it is unique in my gaming experience. Never have there been so many NPCs crammed into such a space! The mission is to kidnap the owner of the venue who is the daughter of a Japanese crime boss. While they manage to secure the girl the mission again runs awry of Lynch's poor self restraint prior to the prisoner exchange and the crime boss unleashes his minions in a memorable night-time shootout in a Japanese parkland setting.

Alas time is up for Kane and his family as not all of The 7's money is returned. Some harrowing scenes follow as Kane's wife is killed. Following a series of shootouts at a construction site Kane and Lynch, now united in their cause, work for the remainder of the game in rescuing Kane's daughter, Jenny, from The 7. Kane and Lynch will need help and the next mission is to bust out three hardened criminals, all former acquantances of Kane, from a US prison. This is a great mission as you fight into and out of the prison complex as the prisoners riot and you are never sure who is shooting at who.

You now have three more characters to control, Rific, Thapa and Shelly, in addition to Lynch as your squad for the subsequent missions. Each character can be given individual commands, as above, and you can swap weapons with any of them. Each character in later missions comes with a squad of rebel fighters for the big set piece battles that follow.

Next its a massive two part mission in Tokyo where you take out the crime boss whose daughter you tried to kidnap. This means a vertical assault on a Toko high rise board room followed by an escape to ground level. What follows is a great shoot out with police and Japanese SWAT along the main street outside the tower, which is reminiscent of the movie Heat and one of the best action sequences in the game.

Meanwhile The 7 are busy staging a coup to overthrow the government in Havana, Cuba (!) and Kane, Lynch and the others head off to stifle their plans. The revolution is well underway by the time they arrive and it's pretty much a war zone with street battles where your tactical commands will either make or break the mission. These Cuban missions are tougher than the earlier ones and contain the one truly frustrating, teeth-gnashing and mumbled oaths segment requiring you to take out a helicopter with an RPG. This is thankfully the only thing akin to a "boss fight" in the whole game, which overall is quite realistic and without any super-human enemy characters.

From Havana its off to the jungles of Venezuela where The 7 have escaped to after the failed revolution for the final showdown. Battling through various jungle drug camps, outposts and mountain top haciendas Kane and company finally locate Jenny. The final showdown comes, after an on-the-rails MG on jeep-ride to a jungle airstrip, high in the mountains. Disabling the plane that was to take Jenny away yet again, Kane finally frees his daughter. At this point Kane has two options, either escape alone with Jenny in the nearby helicopter leaving his men, including Lynch, behind or help his comrades make good there escape. Selecting either option leads to different outcomes but Kane is damned either way. Although K&L has a sequal it is not evident from either game ending that there may be one so the game stands alone.

Gameplay is very similar to the recently played, and superior if more dated in visual appeal, Freedom Fighters. The main player and squad controls are almost identical. The save system is also similar in that there are no autosaves but you can keep replaying segments of a mission unless you fail to complete it and exit in which case you will need to start from the beginning of the mission. One weakness is the "latch on" cover system which perhaps as a result of being in the early days of its introduction into gaming is less than perfect, but worked for me 75% of the time as I intended.

Your character and your squad mates can be revived from near fatal wounds via a syringe of adrenalin (which is automatically injected when you approach the character requiring aid). The catch is that if shots of adrenalin are too frequent you (or other character) will die of an overdose. Some missions are tougher than others and seem to get tougher as you progress through the game into the large set piece gun battles with multiple enemies firing from several directions that dominate the last several missions. Enemy AI is pretty good in that they do try to flank rather than just rush you.

The game ran very stable on my rig at high settings and indeed it looks very good, almost cinematic. Both sound and graphics lend to the atmosphere however as noted the language may upset a few players. Finally, I could not access multiplayer and am not sure if this is a problem with signing into Windows Live, but it did appear you needed four players to even start the MP game not even being allowed to "stroll around" the MP maps.

OVERALL" K&L was a fun game with many rewarding and enjoyable aspects. Good but not great and better than suggested by the majority of reviews in my opinion. For those who always preferred being the bad guys in those school yard "cops and robbers" games.