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A COCTAIL OF Max Payne & Hitman THAT NEEDED MORE SHAKING

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: September 05, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is a game that enjoys one of the most SOLID story-lines that came out of game developing in the last 3 years. Unfortunately, this was NOT enough.

You are Kane, an aged mercenary and former member of a criminal brotherhood known as The 7. The last heists failed, you get arrested and convicted - yet you are a traitor in The 7's books anyway. Having you for making off with the loot somehow, they send Lynch (a psychotic, easily distracted and pill-popping murderer) to first break you out of prison and then make sure he gets their money back. They are sure you will play ball: they have kidnapped your wife and daughter to ensure it.

Now this is a foundation to built a GREAT TPS game! Unfortunately KANE & LYNCH does not reach the top floor as the game demonstrates all the flaws of a rushed release.

The character movements feel too scripted and automatic at some places (a console left-over I guess) whereas they have to be spoon-fed detailed directions at some others. Since one cannot predict where the one or the other will occur, it will eventually get on your nerves.

The squad curse is not lifted for KANE & LYNCH either: the AI of your squad is infantile at best - but you will be thankful that your enemies do not demonstrate a higher one either!
Also, the game is pretty short: it shouldn't take you more than 7 hours on normal difficulty.

Graphically this is a beautiful game - notably though not at par with, say, CRYSIS. Keep in mind that the strength of KANE & LYNCH is its story.
The gameplay and the cut-scenes blend seamlessly and the story flows like an A-List movie. And you will definitely not get bored: from the inside of a prison, to rappelling from a skyscraper, to escaping a packed Tokyo dance club...

Although a well developed character story and a visually well designed game, they did NOT complete their follow through!

A disappointment...

Waste of Money (PC Version)

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 10, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I am disappointed with the loss of my $29.99. Its hard to beleive that games are still made like this "They sold me a brick wrapped in shrinkwrap". The game is so buggy and not a patch in sight.

Do not Purchase this game!! You will be so dissapointed.

EIDOS says that it can't get every computer configuration to work. But what about when one can play Half-life, Call of Duty 4, Battlefield 2 & 2142.

The audio will not work properly

Highly underrated

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

The only reason everyone is tearing this game a new one is because of the one Gamespot guy that got fired for giving this a bad review. Being a Michael Mann fan, I am the exact demographic this game was aimed at. The game consists of a bank heist similar to the movie "Heat" and a nightclub shootout similar to "Collateral". I don't know what everyone else is whining about with the game not working on their machines. It ran perfect on my rig at max quality. I've never been impressed with any of Eidos' other franchises other than Deus Ex and Timesplitters, but I would have to say this one would take 3rd place (shut up Tomb Raider fanboys, the controls in those games SUCK).

I'll give the reviewers credit that the graphics ARE dated, the AI DOES suck, and the cover system IS a train wreck, and you SHOULD buy this game at less than full retail price (otherwise yeah you are being robbed). Maybe Eidos could fix up the AI and the cover system and release a patch. It definitely would make the game more enjoyable.

If you're a casual gamer looking for something different from the "let's save the world" song and dance and/or a big Michael Mann fan like me, give this game a shot. Don't buy it at the full MSRP of $40-50 but don't pass it up either. You get to be BAD GUYS for crying out loud!

I will step out and complain that I think it's a ripoff to have to pay for an Xbox Live membership to even play multiplayer so unless I cough up $9.99 a month for a live membership for the only MS Live game I own, I'll never play the fun multiplayer.

Great game to play

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game las month and is one of the games that are very fun, I installed this game and had a lot of fun with it; however, the installtion of this game is good, but the game chrashes sometime and have e-mailed the support team at Eidos, but haven't recieved a response. There phone support is not very good, because you would have leave a message and you get a phone call back within 24Hours. I think that Eidos has created the game very nice and fun to play, but if you have Windows Vista or Windows XP it could crash at some point. I am not saying that I would recommend this game, but would just wanted let other people know that it can chrash at sometime, and would have to contact support. Finally, I whish that Eidos made the game more stable to Windows Vista or Windows XP.

Wish I hadn't purchased

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: January 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I purchased this game because of the connection with the Hitman series which was enjoyable. I wish I hadn't wasted the money. It's buggy and the inability to skip past cut scenes after death gets really frustrating. The story is alright and somewhat entertaining but there are many other titles which are much better, while not 3rd person shooters I'd check out Bioshock, Call of Duty 4, Crysis, the Witcher, The Orange Box (team fortress 2, and portal), etc.

A little more?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: December 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I had a blast anticipating this game and going along with all the hyped in the media. Although this excitement ended after the final scene in the game.

My expectations for the game were far too great for what is at hand. Don't get me wrong, the parts where you get to mow down scores of baddies in one mission is quite thrilling. Though there is no re-playability to the game as a whole! I played the game through in 6 hours, looking under every rock, tree, room, building, etc., and there's nothing for me to go back to. It's like a B movie, maybe if they have additions to this game in the future, you can see this game as a piece in the puzzle. Though for now, it is just piece #1 in a thousand.

The repetitive death audio clips can annoy you after you die 50 times because you cannot locate the baddie in time for his sniper bullet. Controls are designed for a console controller. In this game I was expecting at least a few bosses to fight against, but all in all there were none except for the ending. :/

The PLUS side to this game is that it does have a few exciting moments and the banter between Kane and Lynch is quite humorous. Also the group controlling is fun, but has been done better elsewhere. If they would have added a few more scenes and actually ended the game's storyline better, I would give it a higher score.

That's my motto for this game is: buy it, beat it, sell it. Cheers!

Don't Even Bother

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: December 24, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Don't waste your money on this unless you enjoy replaying the same levels over and over and over and over again with no room for strategy nor FPS tactics in the most primitive sense.

Graphics are severely outdated by today's standards and the box says "coop" mode when what you get is the ability to play coop via a split screen on one pc???

This really irked me since I bought two copies of the game to play over our LAN. $100 bucks totally wasted for what amounts to a $12 game like maybe five years ago.

Eidos might have thought it slick to trick LAN users like us by FALSELY advertising COOP mode just to get you to buy multiple copies but guess what? NEVER EVER AGAIN EIDOS!

We buy an average of four to seven games a month and Eidos will never be any of them.

The other thing is the amount of gratuitous foul language used in this game for practically any line--after a while it feels like your surrounded by angry poor inner city kids cursing left and right at anything.

Don't be fooled people, just because it says Games for Windows with the Windows logo and all of that, it doesn't equate to a quality game at all.

AVOID THIS AT ALL COST EVEN IF YOU HAVE MONEY TO THROW AWAY--this is one of the worst titles for 2007!

A Poor Game From Eidos!!?!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 19
Date: December 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Kane & Lynch is outdated fare for pc-gamers with years of experience speeding or slogging or sneaking through generations of FPS games. As far as ports go, it's not the most disappointing I've ever played (WHY DIDN'T HALO INCLUDE CO-OP!!!). K&L attempts to bring squad-based combat to the seedy crime story shooter sub-genre of gaming. It does not succeed. Unfortunately for its publishers, it is probably the least competitive FPS on the PC game market today.

(I don't know how good it looks on an x-box or PS3, and I don't really care. This is a PC game review, so if you love playing this game on your console, please observe that I am only reviewing the PC port of this game.)

The first problem with K&L is the poor AI. The AI controller feels ancient after playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and Crysis. Opponents and teammates go straight to objective points (cover positions, good firing positions, or ordered destinations), without utilizing cover or providing covering fire. Also, your teammates sometimes, momentarily, stick on walls or cover while running past, which demonstrates, among other things, pathfinding problems in the AI.

The zoom/aim fire is severely outdated. Iron-sights have been an industry standard for years in the PC shooter market, and the fact that K&L uses an old mini-zoom with a crosshair change instead of well rendered iron sights significantly drops its comparative worth.

K&L's graphics appear last-gen or mediocre when compared to its competitors (Crysis, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl). Even with tweaking to max the graphics on my machine, the K&L graphics weren't as smooth or realistic as any of the other three games listed. This might be harsh, but playing K&L right after finishing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the graphics in K&L were like cartoons.

Speaking of tweaks, this game actually required them. I personally take it as a bad sign when a game has problems playing on default settings in a system with better than recommended specs. I do tweak my games and hardware settings for performance, sound, and graphics enhancement, but a game should run smoothly, if not maxed out, when loaded onto a computer with better than recommended specs. K&L doesn't do that. I had to tweak my settings just to get it to run smooth. The publishers just rushed too hard, and compatibility suffered. This is poor coding like I haven't seen since Max Payne, that gem of a game, showed us all what good, tight code could do for a game.

Scripting in K&L is much less than smooth. Enemies can spawn three feet in front of the player if one moves too quickly for the heavily scripted AI to keep up. For example, I took the left hand slope/path toward the docks from the church. Unfortunately, I moved to the exit too quickly for the game to register, so it spawned five enemies right on top of me. Poof, there they were. This should never happen. I haven't seen spawns this visible since the 90's. More than anything else, multiple bugs of this kind, throughout the game, demonstrate very, very poor scripting.

Squad controls are extremely limited. The game doesn't allow you to hotkey the squad command submenu orders or hotkey individuals in your squad. This might sound like nitpicking, but there have been some really good squad command control structures offered in squad based PC titles over the past five years, and the K&L team didn't use any of them. In the end, the squad based controls, especially when combined with poor AI pathfinding, where more frustrating than helpful. I ended up just beating the game using ancient run and gun tactics, and only using the squad commands when they were required.

Combat controls also suffer. The fire-from-cover feature is a cool addition to gaming, but please let us control our character. Titles in the Splinter Cell, Metal Gear, or Gears of War series allow you to key into and out of cover in their control systems. Having crates or walls GRAB you when you're trying to walk away from them is really annoying. So, in this area, K&L falls short of both old and new titles.

Finally, the game is way too short. Frankly, for fifty bucks, I expect twelve hours of straight through game-play at a minimum. I don't appreciate sitting down during the week to warm up for some serious weekend game-play, only to beat the game in under five hours. It was sad. Even with all of the frustrations, bugs, and annoyances, the game didn't take up more time than a DVD movie with a decent set of special features. This, more than anything else, makes me say that this game isn't worth more than $20-$25, which is about what you would pay for audio-visual entertainment lasting between 4 and 5 hours.

I cannot recommend Kane & Lynch: Dead Men for any attribute except a decent attempt at having a story line of sorts. It is surpassed by other new FPS games on the PC market in all aspects of game design, play, and visual effects. The best FPS games on the PC market are currently Crysis, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, BioShock, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. These are all great games in different ways. They all do some really new things, or revamp old stuff in new and extremely improved ways. So, if you have to have a really good FPS this year get one of them, and leave Kane & Lynch on the shelf.

once again the "games for windows" logo means it won't work as expected

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: December 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Like a schmuk I thought that going to vista with my new HO(P) d4790y would mean a happy gaming experience with my new-ish Gforce 8600GTS with 640mb of RAM, my numerous cores of intelligence, my 4 gig of RAM (Yes, the kinfunts at HP sold me 4 when the OS can only see 3.. law suit anyone ?)
Any way, once again the "for Windows" slogo on the box persuaded me to buy the game, only to find after dicking about for a whole evening that the window they refer to is "throw this crap out of the window in anger" no hope of making it run on Vista.

AVOID THIS GAME. I even tried to run it on my lame old XP SP2 machine with a decent enough ATI card and it failed to function..

I also downloaded all the newest NVIDIA drivers. After the first install failed, it would not complete, I removed K and L and reinstalled the drivers, faced numerous system hangups.. Thanks EIDOS, you are the next best thing to a virus, you lame frigers.

Not as good as videos/previews made it out to be

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: December 18, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I was really hyped up for the game by the videos and previews. The actual game is glitchy and not very well optimized. I'd buy it for 20 bucks, but not full price.

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