It seems like review time to me and review I shall but before i open your mind to the world of Kane the Criminal i want to quickly explain something to you. Many of you may think that my reviews are Yahtzee-esque or perhaps i am trying hard to be the next Yahtzee Croshaw… I’ll tell you now that i have no intention of being like him or writing the way he does. The videos he submit are harsh, picky and often mislead gamers, even if he does occasionally hit the nail on the head. I on the other hand try to let you know about everything in the game that you will notice and bring some perspective to it or at least make you realize some of the key features in the game. So those who accuse me of being a Copy-Cat be gone! I do not want you here if you continue to think that.
Recently i’ve been re-playing K&L, Kane and Lynch, which happens to be a third-person co-op shooter, emphasis on the co-op part. You, player one, play the character of Kane, an old mercenary, that seems to always be down on his luck and always seems to have some form of enemy ready to remove his brains. The second player controls Lynch the family man who ironically kills his entire family as they started changing and going against him. Both characters are very in depth and even though i couldn’t relate to them i could of easily put them into a film, meaning they pretty much felt real. So the game begins with Kane and Lynch escaping out of a confinement van before they reach the destination of Deathrow. Lynch leads Kane with a group of other criminals, non-inmates, to some of Kane’s former allies, or so you would think. Apparently Kane is a bit of a rebel as he’s betrayed nearly every single person under the sun, including his mother. So Kane owes these guys and they want it by this time and you pretty much have Lynch following you around as some form of pet if you’re playing on your own. Now it may seem like i’m trying to make the storyline seem slim and dull but the game is completely driven off of the story and i will tell you now that it is absolutely intense! Me and my housemate managed to complete the game in around 8-10 hours and some of the scenes in the game are astonishing. Even though i was pleased with the content of the story it doesn’t necessarily mean that i essentially enjoyed the game, i’ll write more.
The third-person-ness is presented in a heavy manner, by heavy i mean it takes a lot of doing to do something. When you pick up a gun you can feel the weight of Lynch’s flappy thighs pick up a nearby shotgun or when you’re running you can feel the fat around Kane’s cheeks wobble. It feels as if i’m playing Gears of War or Army of two with the heavy-ness of the armour slowing me down immensely. It takes a lot of getting used to especially when you’re used to playing Halo or CoD as the sheer speed of these two games is greatly different to K&L. Essentially though the game reeks of the Hitman series, all the jumping and movement is pretty much based around Blood Money. I am a fan of the Hitman series but if Eidos was going to make this game a huge success they should of taking more of a new approach to the game.
The controls in the game are fairly obvious with Ltrig to aim and Rtrig to shoot etc but i don’t understand where this whole pushing of the two analog sticks has come from. If you push down the left analog stick you will see where your next destination is whereas if you push down the right analog stick you get to see your choice of weapons and grenades. Now why couldn’t they use another button to do this? Yes i’m getting picky but as i’ve recently realized in TwoHuman when they change controls the player gets confused and starts getting angry, like i was. It slows down the process of even playing the game when you have controls like that too, you have to stop and hold down the analog stick to see where you are going then go on the move again. It would have been a lot simpler to put that control on a bumper or on one of the direction buttons but no Eidos don’t do things like that.
Now there are some pretty decent things in K&L besides the Story and here is my list as follows:
When doing the main campaign i was put on a level where i was in the middle of a night club and i had to escape with another person. Sounds easy right? Well now think about 200 random npcs running about every where knocking you around and generally confusing you making you shoot them instead of the guards. In the entire game Eidos has really looked at the idea of groups and they’ve done a really good job in making me believe the sheer proportion of people surrounding my character. Even when we were in the “Modern Warfare” stage i saw hundreds of troops being blown up making it feel like actual Warfare. The only other game where i have seen so many people in one scene is Dynasty Warriors.
In the game you could have a crew and although i’m not too interested in it i thought that it added a nice touch to the game. You don’t get to customize your crew nor do your crew do anything spectacular. In fact what do they do? In theory the crew is meant to help you take out enemies quicker and maybe save you when you need saving. In practice they die a lot and you save them as you continually use them as Guinea pigs. Your crew members can be pretty bad at times and not in a sense of retardation but in a sense of being bad, wow i can’t believe i took English A level. Sometimes they will be shooting at 1 target for about 10 minutes and still not have hit them… that is not very good. The good thing about them though is that you can always control them by using X Y or B and each one has a different command, attack, defend and follow. As i’ve said they are fairly useless but they work pretty well for soaking up bullets.
One key point that made me want to marry the game is the psychological part that the game undertakes. Lynch happens to be a psychopath and during some of the levels my roommate would start shooting random civilians because on their screen they would be policemen or wearing pig masks. After pointing out that they are civilians he would stop but just that little extra nudge of Eidos saying “No we haven’t forgotten about Lynch’s condition” is really nice to see.
Multiplayer is something completely different to what i’ve seen before and to be honest if it was still pretty active i would definitely play it over Halo. The game mode is basically a heist and you and 5 others rob a place, can be a diamond shop, bank or grocery etc to then either escape together and split the money or kill each other and try and escape with all of the money. This really causes a stir because if you are killed by a vigilante criminal you respawn as one of the policemen. Again to confuse things more if you kill your killer you get a nice chunk of money for doing so and you can then start picking up 10% finders fee. So basically you’re in a bank heist and you want to fuck everyone over, excuse my language. Plan and simply and really satisfying when you shoot your teammate in the back and still their $1500000 and then get in the van with all the money to yourself 
One of my largest concerns with the game is the lack of choice/customization and that’s to do with weapons, crew and even character. For the whole game i pretty much stuck to whatever i was given at the beginning and the same goes for my roommate who always spawned with a shotgun. If the game had more choice and you could actually tell what gun was what then it would be a lot more interesting online as well as during the campaign. I really hate the fact how i can’t be Lynch because i really don’t want to have to drag my roommate for another completion of the game just so i can get the few remaining achievements on the Lynch side, it definitely feels like laziness on Eido’s side.
In conclusion the game had a lot of potential and even though there are some shining points it still lacks some basic things. it was definitely worth the 5 pounds though and if you are looking for a game that is similar to Hitman/Arm of Two or you just want something slightly more sadistic with a bit of a Storyline then this is definitely something you will want to pick up.
Any comments/questions on the forum or here.
