Are you a fan of director Michael Mann? If so, you’ll feel right at home with Kane and Lynch, two mercenaries who find themselves on the wrong end of a deal, having to survive and please a group who want their money and they want it now. It’s a game filled with cursing, violence, bank robbings, and murder galore. It’s also got a pretty good story, but plenty of control issues as well to help mire and tarnish what could’ve been a really cool game.

THE STORY SO FAR
You specifically play as Kane, a criminal who is busted out of jail by Lynch – a deranged psycho – and is forced to gather the money he apparently stole from an evil crime syndicate or else his wife and daughter will be killed, along with him once the job is done. Wanting to keep your family safe, you agree to their demands and bring Lynch along as your watchdog, working towards gathering the money that they are looking for. You’ll rob banks, visit crowded clubs, and break into some very heavily guarded places. Will you be able to get the money and save your family?

The greatest thing Kane and Lynch has going for it is its story, which is very stylish and interesting. Part of the reason the story works so well is because of Kane and Lynch themselves, who are great characters to get to play around with. Kane is a bad guy, of course, but he also cares about his family and wants to keep them safe even if he does have to die in the process. The real winner from the duo, however, is Lynch, who is a psycho who is able to keep his troubled history under wraps as long as he takes his medicine, but don’t be surprised when you start to hear him rambling and having hallucinations and blackouts, not knowing what is going on and often sounding like he has two personalities.

The story is very action packed, playing out with many levels and mission objectives that would be amazing to see on the big screen in a movie. For example, after a bit of training, your first mission is robbing a bank, which has several parts, staring with releasing gas to take everyone out, to infiltrating the bank, to robbing the bank, to breaking out of the bank. Another early level has you making your way into a club, which is full of NPCs dancing everywhere, making it hard to even move through the crowd.

With cool characters, a good story, and many neat set locations, it’s a shame that in the end the gameplay just isn’t there.

SINGLE-PLAYER: GAMEPLAY
You play as Kane trying to get the money he needs to save his family, but don’t go thinking that you’re only controlling your actions in the game. Since Lynch’s name is in the title of the game and plays such an important role in the game, you’ll also have to issue him commands to help you battle security guards and other people gunning for your head. The system is pretty easy to use once you know the commands, though it still feels like sometimes the AI doesn’t process the commands and carry them out. When Lynch understands the commands, however, you can issue him to stay in a certain location, follow you, or advance to a specific area. Besides Lynch, you’ll also amass a crew throughout the game, often letting you issue commands to groups of people, but you’re expected to issue them individually by changing out characters, which isn’t the easiest thing to do; more often than not you’ll try to tell Lynch to move, but end up sending one of the unknown goons instead. Besides helping you fight enemies, they’ll also give you some ammo when you run out, which is usually easy to do just by running up to them.

Combat takes place in a third-person perspective, working much like the Hitman franchise, which shouldn’t be that surprising given the fact that Eidos worked on both games. One thing you’ll notice almost immediately is how floaty the controls are, as you don’t really feel like you are walking, but rather skating and sliding across the ground, as the controls are really wonky and not precise at all. The camera system also doesn’t work well given this third-person perspective, as it doesn’t work very well when you’re hanging around objects and walls.

Cover also plays a big part of the game, though not as much as a Gears of War, for example. Despite that the game doesn’t rely on it as much, you’ll still need to seek cover to survive for any amount of time, but it’s often difficult to properly get behind cover or at least position yourself so you can get a good shot, meaning you’ll constantly get shot because the game’s broken controls are pushing you out of cover and into the line of fire. Shooting is also a huge part of the gameplay, as you’re constantly shooting people, but once again the controls are so loose you’ll miss your targets many, many times. If you’re running and gunning you’ll have a tendency to overshoot your target, given that your shooting reticule is moving too fast, but if you hold the left trigger in to zoom in, suddenly your reticule is moving too slow, often not being able to keep up with the enemies who are running around pretty quickly and are by no means simply standing there.

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