Pointless profanity, my ass!

Today I wanted to talk about Kane and Lynch, but since you have probably already seen and analyzed the introductory image above, I’ll concentrate on just some of The Dead Men’s aspects which most reviewers found bad and I didn’t.

First of all, a lot of people (not only reviewers) seem to dislike this game because of all those “fucks” thrown in everywhere in the dialogues. When I say that there’s usually at least some swearing in shooters (I mean come on! These people KILL each other! You can stand people dying, but you can’t stand them swearing? What’s that about?) they respond with ‘yeah, but that doesn’t sound nice, like in GTA’ or ‘yeah, but there’s definitely too much of it’. Well, my first impression upon seeing the Kane and Lynch advertisement a long time ago was that these people were bad-asses who learned the dark side of life. Who could ever blame them for not acting like, let’s say, Dante in DMC? In their shoes I would probably talk like Rocco in The Boondock Saints, anyway.

Next, there is the badly driven storyline, or as some say ‘we-have-to-think-of-SOMETHING-for-heaven’s-sakes’ excuse of a storyline. Yeah, true, there’s not a lot of background on our two protagonists and the story-driving cutscenes are few and far between. And yet I find that awkward, painfully straight-forward way this plot has been delivered… well, realistic. It’s like taking a breath of fresh air from all those games which follow the Hollywood movie-plot-making routine. While playing an average shooter, I can almost always tell what will happen next. With IO Interactive that’s never the case. I honestly enjoyed the speed of the story with no unnecessary distractions, all covered with those pleasant Max-Paynish fill-ins in case of a game-over. Of course I’m not saying that every shooter out there should have as little plot as possible, but I AM saying it’s good to have a fast-paced shooter with a realistic approach every once in a while. Besides you don’t need a rich and complicated story to make a great game. Look at Portal for example.

Alright, since this is supposed to be a review, let’s go to the serious stuff. Yes, the AI sucks and it sucks big time. I couldn’t remember feeling that infuriated with NPCs since Resident Evil: Outbreak. Yes, the controls suck as well, especially the covering system – I’m positive I’ll never ever try to cover against the wall again, even while playing “Black meets Team Fortress 2”. COVER means DEATH. After a few hours of Kane and Lynch these two words even start to look similar. Online play – no comment; never played it, probably never will.

And one last thing. Most of the time, it’s Kane, Kane and Kane only. Lynch, who in my opinion is just as interesting and resourceful a character, has been degraded to a role of dopey side-kick. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to switch between the two of them anytime you want? Just to see their story from different points of view? Maybe the only time the player would automatically be switched to Kane is while one of the infamous Lynch black outs.

What can I say? This game could have been much better, no question about it, but hell, it doesn’t deserve all that crap it got. I for one, await a sequel.