This game has an awesome poster doing the rounds with the two protagonists upon it, those being the criminal traitor Kane and the psychopathic Lynch. Kane and Lynch escape death row at the beginning of the game and after a chase through some back alleys from a third person perspective you’re confronted by The7, a gang you stole something from and now they’ve got you out of the proverbial frying pan and into the fire to get it back for them. Lynch is there to look after you and be your wingman.
This is a third-person shooter with a great story and two very colourful characters whose relationship reminds me of George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino in From Dusk ‘til Dawn. Kane just wants to see his family again and get this stolen item back for the gang and Lynch wants to help some of the time, other times he snaps and just kills everyone in sight, getting the duo into even more trouble.
Unfortunately, instead of playing like Gears of War or even Saints Row, this one feels more like The Getaway in terms of controls. The aiming is dodgy, you get stuck on walls as you snap onto them and then pop out of cover when you don’t want to and you can shoot people in the head several times before they decide they should be dead by now. If it weren’t for the excellent characterisation and cool story this would be dreadful but the story just about pulls this one through the mediocre gameplay.
Looks-wise it’s a bit of a mix. Sometimes the game looks like The Getaway on the PS2 depending which environment you’re in and then occasionally it looks fantastic. Both main character models are detailed and are fun to watch as they dish out more F words than Gordon Ramsey. Also, I don’t see why Assassin’s Creed can handle massive open environments with no noticeable slowdown, but Kane and Lynch can suffer badly, sometimes even if there’s not actually a lot going on on screen.
There’s also a multiplayer mode on there with the same shooting problems as the single player campaign, so if you want to play online I can’t really recommend this over Gears of War, Call of Duty 4 or even ShadowRun.
To sum up, it’s a below average shooter with above average story and characterisation which saves it from getting a lower score than what it’s about to get.
When it all balances out it gets a decidedly average 5 out of 10.
