Kane & Lynch 2 was the Serbian Film of gaming, and for all its faults, it managed to make me actually disturbed in the way most other “shock games” in the AAA space didn’t. However, I never played the first game. All I knew about it was that it was one of the biggest industry plants of its time and the Gamespot review scandal. Like, they were so sure it would be the biggest hit in the year that they announced the movie adaptation in the making… It is funny because the games that would have gotten its notoriety today would have been the live service slops like Concord, but for its time, it was cinematic shooters, which appear to be literally every AAA game wanted to be at the time.
The games that aspire to be movies still exist, but at least now they tend to be more open or sandboxy. Not for 2007, when every game wanted to be linear and scripted. For Kane and Lynch, in particular, I’d go as far as to say it is more railroaded than Uncharted 1, which is surprising considering this was made by the Hitman developers. Hitman already mastered merging cinema and sandbox freedom, so I was stunned in the bank heist mission here. The story frames Kane as the expert who has robbed the bank before. Then some random NPC pops up and infodumps “this will happen, this will happen, this will happen”, and you follow those instructions to the teeth. There is a ton of “hold out until the NPC allows you to proceed to the next story beat” moments and turret segments. These make the player passive, and you become an actor acting out a script. Can you imagine if such a heist was actually flexible, as in, you can rob it in any way you can in the way Hitman did with the assassinations?
It wouldn’t have been all that bad if the core combat was fun. Instead, it’s basically a two-weapon limit, hitscan shooting, and regenerating health cover shooter, but it doesn’t even do that well. There is no reason to change your weapon since you can replenish your ammo from the partner AI at any time. Why experiment with arsenal? There is no cover button, so you have to move forward toward the cover to make the player hide, but it often doesn’t work. There is one particular segment in Japan where you walk up to the bridge and hide behind a cover, but the character literally won’t take cover, resulting in frustrating deaths from the snipers. Go play Kill Switch, the very game most cover shooters, including K&L takes inspiration from. Going from Kane and Lynch to Kill Switch is embarrassing despite the fact that K&L came out in 2007 while KS is a game from 2003. Kill Switch’s tight controls and dynamic range of movements all elevate the game to a level that few cover shooters can measure up to
I’m not sure what’s up with IOI, but their combat has been the weakest part of their games. Hitman still hasn't moved past its stiff combat and controls, as Agent 47 still feels as weightless as ever to control. In terms of flexibility or range in terms of movement, the series hasn't really improved. The game still operates on an outdated stealth game design approach, which, after playing something like MGSV, Dishonored, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, feels clunky on a moment-to-moment basis. So imagine playing Hitman in a run-and-gun way and see how quickly the game becomes super clunky. And apply that to the entire game. That’s Kane and Lynch.
At least K&L2 has its raw, unique aesthetics and vibe to enhance the gameplay. Really, the first game makes me appreciate the sequel more because that took risks and compelling in the way that actually made me flinch with emotions. I can’t say that about the first game, which is a by-the-numbers crime movie. It’s like the lesser director imitating Michael Mann. There is one cool level inspired by Collateral, where you shoot thorugh the crowd in the nightclub. Because the club is so dark, you have a difficulty to identify who are the normal civilians and who are the guards. That was a great set-piece, using the cinematic inspiration as a gameplay. There is also a Heat-inspired firefight in the Japanese streets, and it is a hightlight because the open area gives the player more leeways to fight the enemies.
That never reaches the last third of the game, which takes place in Cuba and Venezuela. At least, there has been a novelty of being a Michael Mann video game, but you are suddenly spawned into a civil war in South America, and it turns into every other military shooter. This is the point where my mind tuned out because it doesn’t connect. So you are trying to find your daughter from the gangsters, and you go to Cuba because those gangsters are waging a war against… the Cuban government. What? It’s not even fun to play. Although the game was never a looker even for 2007 (the year of Crysis, Uncharted, BioShock, and Halo 3), this part of the game feels as if it’s unfinished. The jungle looks ugly. There are no careful lighting considerations. The enemie are plastered thoughtlessly with sudden difficulty spikes.
Also, isn’t it weird how there is no real transition scene? The story hops between various locations, but the moment one location ends, it spawns into another location. Look at this transition from Japan to Cuba. You are already engaged with something, and then cut to black, some half-assed exposition, and you are engaged with something in a different country. It’s jarring, but not in an intentional way like K&L2.
I was actively looking for things to like, assuming that the first game might have been interesting or unique in the way the sequel was. There are a few set-pieces like the club level, but there is not much to enjoy. The story is one-note, and the gameplay is tedious all the way through.