Xbox 360

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men

Kane & Lynch kommt mit einer selten guten Geschichte und unverbrauchten Charakteren daher. Steuerungstechnisch, sowie in Hinblick auf den Umfang gibt es zwar einige Schwächen, die das Drumherum aber wieder ausbaden kann. Wer also einen durchschnittlichen Shooter mit einer genialen Verpackung sucht, der sollte unbedingt zugreifen.

Mit diesen beiden Typen ist nicht zu scherzen. Kane und Lynch sorgen immerhin mit rabenschwarzem Humor für etwas Auflockerung zwischen den knallharten, brutalen Kampfszenen. Dieses Spiel gehört nicht in Kinderhände, sondern ist derbe Unterhaltung für Erwachsene. Die Aufmachung erinnert an berühmte Gangsterfilme aus Hollywood, die Geschichte ist packend inszeniert. Grafisch hat das Spiel kleine Schwächen, die aber kaum stören. Die Sprecher der Hauptfiguren sind absolute Spitzenklasse und sorgen mit sarkastischen Sprüchen für Atmospähre. Nichts für zar besaitete Gemüter, aber ein extrem spannendes Gangsterabenteuer - "gut" so.

Kane & Lynch ist einer dieser vielversprechenden Titel, die zwar mit einer bombastischen Inszenierung, gut erzählter Story und gelungenen Hauptcharakteren aufwarten können, jedoch bei näherer Betrachtung gravierende spielerische und technische Mängel aufweisen. Sicherlich wurden uns die zu Beginn gestellten Fragen beantwortet, dennoch stehen wir mit offenem Mund und zahlreichen weiteren offen Fragen am Ende wieder auf weiter Flur. Wie konnte es eine solch abgrundtief schlechte KI in das Spiel schaffen? Wieso lassen die Entwickler die Spannungskurve in der zweiten Hälfte des Spiels dermaßen verflachen? Wieso habe ich den Titel in wenigen Stunden komplett durchgespielt? Warum gibt es keinen Online-Coop-Modus?

Kane and Lynch could have been a fantastic game had they have spent some more time on it. Instead we are left with a fun but short and buggy game. Hopefully they can build upon this decent foundation and make a good sequel.

The presentation, voice acting, characters, and story are absolutely excellent. Kane & Lynch themselves are far from your prototypical action game hero. They’re terrible people who just broke out of jail, and you can expect to kill a lot of cops and innocent people as them. The dialogue between the two is realistic and gritty, and the plot itself is well-written and consistently entertaining. It’s too bad that when the game shifts from cutscenes to gameplay, it suffers tremendously. Certain areas of the game function as they should and are genuinely entertaining (most of the beginning of the game), but others are infuriatingly broken. A boss fight involving a semi truck is near-impossible even on the easiest difficulty setting, and ordering your cohorts around is a chore. Despite the gameplay issues, I’d love to see a sequel that takes the excellent story and characters and just adds a functional game engine.

The Fragile Alliance multiplayer mode is also a tense thrill. Unfortunately, it's also missing something: maps. There are only four and they are all pulled straight out of the campaign. Unless I'm the one missing something, Kane & Lynch fails to live up to its potential.

The cinematics and storyline make this feel like a Hollywood production. The plot is there, the crazy characters and personalities are there and so is the violence. What's missing? Refined controls and a little more flair to the graphics. It is fun to play alone, but more so with a friend in co-op. This game feels a lot like Freedom Fighters. The only problem with that is the mistakes with that game have not been corrected four years later. When it comes to third person shooters, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is not going to be remembered as a classic.

There's certainly a lot here to love and a lot more than you want to love, but most of your time in Kane & Lynch is spent shaking or scratching your head. The problems are just too visible for it to be taken seriously as a gritty thriller.

I can appreciate the effort that went into creating these characters, which were pretty cool. If you do pick this up, make sure you persevere to the end, where you have to make a very hard, grim decision. Overall though the cover system really needed to be done better for this to succeed, it’s 6.5 from me.

Kane & Lynch is a good idea that is plagued by poor controls, unbalanced weapons, a boring story and some questionable writing. That's not to say that you won't have a good time playing through this brief action game, but you will have to put up with a lot of poor development problems before really enjoying yourself.

Well I can't actually recommend this I'm afraid, seeing as there are so many better options for shooter fans at the moment. The co-op is good to have, but it doesn't address the game's main problems. I think this is pretty much the definition of a 6, you can get some entertainment out of it but you can find much better without having to look hard at all.

Despite its flaws, playing through Kane & Lynch was fun most of the time. The characters in the game are great, the voice acting is solid and the story is, for the most part, pretty good. The dialogue is just plain awful in places, though, and both endings leave you feeling unsatisfied. The AI, on both sides, makes some levels a pain in the ass and turns something that should be fun into a chore. If you’re going to play Kane & Lynch, play it with a second player. I had a lot more fun beating the game with my brother than I did by myself.

There’s been recent controversy over this game concerning a fired editor over at a particular gaming site. I fully agree with what he said. This game is severely flawed and his rating was more than appropriate for this particular game. Sloppy and muddy controls, a broken aiming mechanism combined with a couple of characters who you’ll never really care for at any point make for a dull and tedious gaming experience. Compound that with the shoddy squad mechanics, lack of online co-op, and a seemingly broken online experience doesn’t make the game sound appealing in the slightest. The online arena does show some potential if you can connect and stay in a game, but that alone does not warrant enough of a draw and it’s just not worth the effort of obtaining a copy. You can safely skip this game and not feel like you’ve missed out on anything too important.

On attendait énormément de ce Kane & Lynch qui déçoit d'autant plus et ce à quasiment tous les niveaux, la faute à une sortie trop hâtive. Singeant ses modèles cinématographiques sans jamais parvenir à leur niveau, accumulant les bugs (graphiques et de collision), proposant un système d'ordres moins évolué que celui de son modèle Freedom Fighters, devant supporter une IA catastrophique, le soft de Io Interactive, sous des dehors "Manniérés", n'est finalement qu'un brouillon de très bon jeu.

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men makes an admirable attempt at telling a violent story about paid killers and the lengths they'll go to for revenge. But the edges are frayed by comparison with movies and TV shows that do the same thing. The duo looks tough, but they behave like a bickering couple on a honeymoon cruise. It's hard to care for these thugs, and the game's makers know this, so they drag Kane's innocent family into the sordid affair. Just another cheap shot.

Não passa de uma teoria, mas é bem provável que Eidos não tenha anunciado uma seqüência para "Kane & Lynch" à toa. Chega a ser decepcionante pensar que a produtora fez vista grossa para tantos erros apenas com o intuito de lançar o jogo às pressas e lucrar com continuações e adaptações cinematográficas. Tudo por aqui não passa de promessas não cumpridas e expectativas não alcançadas - infelizmente, já estamos cansados de saber que um jogo não se faz apenas de boas idéias. "Kane & Lynch" poderia ter um visual excelente e dezenas de opções onlines e, ainda assim, continuaria na mesma situação precária caso mantivesse a jogabilidade frustrante e inexata que faz parte deste primeiro episódio. Se você quer prestigiar o trabalho da Io Interactive, as quatro edições de "Hitman" são mais que o suficiente.