Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days Screenshots

At first glance I thought these screenshots were grabbed via cam, but upon further glancing at some of the other screenshots they look flat-out grainy, almost like they were grabbed from the Wii:

Click to see the full version of that screenshot and look at Kane’s beard, it’s not fuzzy it’s just really detail-less and spotty.

Details

The game takes place in Shanghai where Lynch (bald psycho) has been working and making a life for himself doing odd jobs. Kane (scarred dude with daughter from first one) is trying to escape life’s complexities and gets back in touch with Lynch when a job goes south for him and he calls Kane in for help.

This time there is online co-op, so that’s good. Hopefully the unfinished bits from the first title or sloppy organization that made different parts of it maddening to play will be tightened up.

We really liked the premise of the Kane and Lynch characters, and had it been given to another studio to flush out and really give us a gritty M-rated adventure as was proposed to us during all the marketing for the title, I think the game would have swept away award after award. The first title fell flat because portions of it were rough around the edge or simply incomplete — mixed in with some sloppy game design and you had a game with mechanics that were frustrating and not fun to play.

The premise itself — psycho + ex-military + daughter + revenge — was pretty bad ass… a lot of opportunities to really make that story shine.

I think they should have had a writer come in and flesh out 30 or so story “moments” in the game that tell the story of the two from start to finish, and then back-fill with game-settings, scenery and big moments of the game to realize those scenes for us.

There are some parts of the game that felt exactly like that — very memorable moments, like the zip-lining down to the glass conference room, blowing the windows and going in, or the dance-club scene. Unfortunately those were the main ones, and shown over and over in the marketing material. The rest of Kane and Lynch 1 that glued those high-impact scenes together were not memorable and sort of stupid.

Does anyone remember the high-way escape in the van, when it breaks down and you have to “protect it” while waves of bad guys spawn from over the ridge and run to you while the get-away driver tries to get it “Started”… do you ALSO remember that if you TOUCHED the van, you would die and the mission would fail?

I have no fucking idea why a designer put that in the game and thought “Yep, THIS will be fun… some random, unrealistic rule that will come as a surprise to anyone that hits it”.

The game was littered with little things like that which made it a frustrating romp.

Let’s hope #2 does better.

Update #1: This was one of my favorite trailers they did for Kane and Lynch 1 :

The gunshot and fade-in as Kane and Lynch look at the camera was an *awesome* teaser at the characters, and the voice-over of the daughter’s realization of how inhuman Kane and Lynch have become makes you think you are about to hop into the shoes of a militarized/medicated psychopath that rides an intense wave straight towards whatever his target is. I think the game missed that mark a bit, humanizing Lynch way too much and making him a bit of the comedic relief and making Kane too soft as well… I wanted them both to be borderline psychopaths with Kane having a strategicly-clear concious… meaning he doesn’t mope or weep, he just thinks “what is best for this mission”.

Basically how Rambo was in the latest Rambo… he wasn’t heartless, but he was like a goddamn machine the entire movie, taking dudes out with precision… which was awesome.