While it's easy to point to Kane and Lynch as a natural evolution of the Hitman series -- same developer, M-rated story, third-person action -- it actually has more similarities to a big-budget action film (which is a bit strange since the moderate-budget Hitman movie is about to hit theaters, but stick with us). From the big set pieces to the fast pacing and intense cut-scenes, Kane & Lynch is all about the chance to be along for a ride, with a few technical flaws making it a bumpy one.
The game follows the titular characters on a quest to rescue and reunite Kane's kidnapped (and highly estranged) family. There's a lot more going on, but that's the core of the story. Kane, who you play as unless you're player two in a co-op game, is the semi-normal mercenary who remains focused on this goal, while Lynch is the crazy one (a "medicated psychopath") who gets easily distracted and is someone you have to keep in line.
Furthering the action-movie feel, the game presents some of the best individual locations you'll find in any game. Sure, it's kind of weird that you bounce from a Tokyo nightclub to the streets of Havana to other seemingly random locations, but it makes for a great experience since each location feels very different from the one before it, and each was obviously put together with a lot of care. The game essentially cuts out the fat that most games would use to connect these scenes, so you get a story that jumps around from great moment to great moment and doesn't really care that it misses some of the connective tissue along the way.
 |
 |
 |
When you're in the Tokyo nightclub and you have to sneak by hundreds of people dancing, or when you have to break out of prison while working with a team of prisoners, or when you have to rappel down the side of a skyscraper, you feel like you're involved in the story rather than just running through environments that just happen to be lined with enemies. Your teammates can give you ammunition if you run out, or adrenaline shots if you die (but not too often) to keep the game going, which works extremely well.
The story is pretty interesting, too. A lot of it is clichéd -- try to save your wife and daughter from the evildoers -- but the writing is solid (minus the overuse of the word "f***") and the story blends very well from cut-scenes to gameplay. It's disappointing that the story focuses so much on Kane and leaves Lynch's medical issues in the background, since Kane is such a straightforward character. But it still tells its tale much better than most games.
But while the campaign is well-structured, there are a few distracting issues. First is the obvious one: no online co-op. It's great that the game has cooperative play, since the story concept plays perfectly into that idea, but it's a shame that you have to play split-screen if you want to play with a friend.
The game also has issues with enemy intelligence, hit boxes, and weird difficulty spikes. The intelligence problems -- where enemies will stand around doing nothing while you snipe them, or stand five feet away and not notice you (one time we ran around a level for a few minutes without being able to proceed because we hadn't killed one guy who wasn't shooting, in motion, or visible from any reasonable angle) -- aren't a huge deal since they don't pop up too often. But when combined with the occasional hit box issues -- where if you shoot an enemy from the wrong perspective in a certain part of their body, it won't register as actually hitting anything -- the game feels cheaper than it should.
The difficulty spikes also indicate a lack of polish. These are rare, and we should note that you have the option to drop down to the easy difficulty setting if you get frustrated, but some scenes on the normal setting are oddly difficult compared to the rest of the game. In one scene that you might consider a boss fight, you have to shoot the glass out of a window until you can kill a truck driver. You can spend forever figuring out how to do this on normal, or drop down to easy and complete the task in about five seconds.
|
 |
|
Kane & Lynch also has a competitive multiplayer mode called Fragile Alliance. Unlike in a lot of shooters there's no deathmatch or capture the flag, which is likely for the best since we'd much rather have one original mode than a few we've seen hundreds of times before. In Fragile Alliance, a team of players attempts to steal money/jewelry/etc. by attacking a specific point on a map. It starts off as a cooperative game where everyone is on the same team going up against the enemies in the environment, but anyone who dies returns as a SWAT officer trying to stop the heist. Adding a level of complexity, players who stay alive on the criminal side can choose to betray/kill each other (thus the title) to steal money from teammates.
It's a fun little timewaster of a mode, but the randomness of who is going to decide to betray whom at what time -- and how quickly you can die -- makes it hard to see the mode as much more than a gimmick, and the same hit detection and enemy intelligence issues from the campaign pop up here as well.
So there are problems that prevent Kane & Lynch from fully realizing its potential, but its concept and execution are strong enough to survive them. We rarely see scenarios and story structure this good in a game, and that makes it easier to forgive some of the more hardcore technical game-design issues. It's definitely more of a popcorn game for the action-movie crowd than a hardcore shooter, but there's nothing wrong with that.
http://rapidshare.com/files/75736956/kaloda.part01.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737075/kaloda.part02.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737030/kaloda.part03.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75736993/kaloda.part04.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737074/kaloda.part05.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737077/kaloda.part06.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75736995/kaloda.part07.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737062/kaloda.part08.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737013/kaloda.part09.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737087/kaloda.part10.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737066/kaloda.part11.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737045/kaloda.part12.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737063/kaloda.part13.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737084/kaloda.part14.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737069/kaloda.part15.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737035/kaloda.part16.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737032/kaloda.part17.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737080/kaloda.part18.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737051/kaloda.part19.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75736994/kaloda.part20.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737072/kaloda.part21.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737059/kaloda.part22.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75736989/kaloda.part23.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75736997/kaloda.part24.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737007/kaloda.part25.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737070/kaloda.part26.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737088/kaloda.part27.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737071/kaloda.part28.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737067/kaloda.part29.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737068/kaloda.part30.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738170/kaloda.part31.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738082/kaloda.part32.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738248/kaloda.part33.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738114/kaloda.part34.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738184/kaloda.part35.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738162/kaloda.part36.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738104/kaloda.part37.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738182/kaloda.part38.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738121/kaloda.part39.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738117/kaloda.part40.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738211/kaloda.part41.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738195/kaloda.part42.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738164/kaloda.part43.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738246/kaloda.part44.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738141/kaloda.part45.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738212/kaloda.part46.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738207/kaloda.part47.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738131/kaloda.part48.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738128/kaloda.part49.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738120/kaloda.part50.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738177/kaloda.part51.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738235/kaloda.part52.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738238/kaloda.part53.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738201/kaloda.part54.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738191/kaloda.part55.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738225/kaloda.part56.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738178/kaloda.part57.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738142/kaloda.part58.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738241/kaloda.part59.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738250/kaloda.part60.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738236/kaloda.part61.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738148/kaloda.part62.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738247/kaloda.part63.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738237/kaloda.part64.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738204/kaloda.part65.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738152/kaloda.part66.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738206/kaloda.part67.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738202/kaloda.part68.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738203/kaloda.part69.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738210/kaloda.part70.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738254/kaloda.part71.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738197/kaloda.part72.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738198/kaloda.part73.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738199/kaloda.part74.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738187/kaloda.part75.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75738205/kaloda.part76.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/75737266/kaloda.part77.rar
Post a Comment