Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days - Limited Edition (PC DVD)

Posted the below in a couple of forums including the official developers board, figured I'd just add it here as although as you can see if you read this I have some issues with the game I felt some of the more extreme complaints I read prior to purchase weren't necessarily entirely fair.

Well, boredom prevailed, bought it this morning and completed it shortly afterwards. Just my thoughts so don't go getting yer knickers in a twist if you disagree. The reason I'm sharing my thoughts I hear you ask, simply I couldn't find much to read prior to buying it so it's here for other "Me's" that are looking for different opinions.

Graphics:

Visually it's really not that bad, sure some of the NPC and area textures could be called into question but Lynch who your controlling for the vast majority of the game has skin textures that can look quite good in places, lighting was a little off the wall in some places but not to such a degree that it would be worth noting beyond being a very minor niggle.

The camera affects however are completely ridiculous and frankly over the top to the point it detracts from the game-play, without spoiling anything to serious there was one section where you sprint across some rooftops near the start of the game where the camera with effects enabled was so out of control I had to literally stop in order to see where the hell I was going, disabling them thankfully was a simple flick of a toggle.

Sound:

From an Auditory standpoint the banter between Kane and Lynch remained interesting but nothing really to write home about, good enough to make what they were saying interesting, or at least interesting the first (and only the first) time you hear it combined with good voice acting (for a game) in some parts, other elements such as gunfire, shouts etc were basic but got the job done.

Music, didn't even register in my mind so I won't bother mentioning it, with that said, the fact it didn't register with me at all is definitely preferable to something you couldn't miss from irritation.

Story:

As I never bothered playing the first one it's hard to comment here, it was "ok" but lacked a clear structure, as a player or viewer were never really given any rhyme nor reason to it combined with no clear goal other than run 'n' gun survive.

The nature of playing sections out of sequence makes sense from what it would seem the writer(s) was/were trying to accomplish but overall it simply felt lacking in character development . All in all it kind of felt like the writer(s) is a/are frustrated film script writer(s) that don't quite have what it takes to get their work picked up.

With all that said, there is certainly an intrigue to this pair of characters, it's just a dammed shame they didn't explore or explain anything about them which leads me onto the length of the game which I will come back to later in the post.

Game-play:

Liner, it's a rails shooter with predictable A.I. as long as you're not expecting anything else you will be happy with it but it's nothing we haven't seen before, again, without spoiling anything I can say there is one section where your fighting from a different perspective, although again it's true it's a "been there, done that" element it was handled well and although obviously shoehorned into the game it didn't feel forced as such leaving it a relatively pleasant change of pace for a very brief moment.

Regarding difficulty, the higher difficulties did feel I have to say a bit cheap, I played on the medium or normal setting and it felt ok but tried both the higher and lower settings to get some perspective. If your idea of harder difficulty involves reloading from the automatic check points more often does it for you then have at it, personally I prefer games that teach me to "play smart" with tactics not "advance slowly in case of NPC gang-bang" ambushes.

Now, going back to the previously mentioned length of the game.

To say its short is an understatement, I've played expansion packs with more longevity, hell I've played micro drip DLC's with more longevity.

Multiplayer will keep console kids entertained for a week or so, other than that there is no real replay value other than playing it again in a year or two if you're bored and there is a gaming famine as can been seen many times a year on average for PC gamers.

Overall:

While it's true some of the criticism above could have gone from minor annoyance into major irritants in a longer game it's also true in a longer game we might have had a decent story with a beginning, middle and an end that made us actually care about these interesting characters, additionally as mentioned above, Kane and Lynch are interesting but only as a minor concept as we are given nothing in the way of character development and only the simplest introduction to their natures, this is also handled primarily through suggestive conversations and not from any real story work.

Being "new" to the franchise I wasn't disappointed really as I had no real expectations but after playing through this title I now feel almost let down that they had these interesting character ideas and yet this is what they used them for.

Score out of 5 on Amazon? I don't usually do that but in order to post I'll have to give it a 2 overall despite it being a fun product, read the above to see how I really felt about it.

Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days - Limited Edition (PC DVD)

Yesterday I wasted [...] on this game. After two hours play I had completely lost interest and was back to playing Total War Barbarian Invasion - which I have had for years.

Brutaly realistic - I dont think so! This game is sold on being brutally realistic. In fact it is heavily censored. Nudity and head shots are blanked out. The cover implies that torture is possible but the game controlls say otherwise. If this was meant to be a kids' game, why the 18 certificate? It is not brutal or realistic so why market it as such?

Online activation took 4 hours. I was aware that the game required online activation. In fact it appears that the whole game had to download over the internet. On a one meg connection this took four hours. When I buy a game in a shop, I dont expect this!

Mouse control did not work properly. Gameplay was frustrating because there was a lag between moving the mouse and seeing the effect which caused me to over react with every movement. This probably does not occur on all machines but since I had checked the specs carefully and tested my machine on[...] I was still disapointed.

The characters are great. The story is quite good. Why the kiddie style sensorship? I was expecting a brutal, adult game in which you saw the look of fear on a victim's face just before shooting / torturing them. What a waste of money!

This game caught my eye, due to the fact that I'd bought Kane and Lynch on PC and xbox, noticed this game was cheap on Amazon.co.uk, and activates on steam. So if you loved the original and have mates to play it with, Kane and Lynch 2 Dog Days is definitely worth buying, This is how the first game should have been. There is enough about Dog Days to convince non-fans of the series to play it ;)