[REVIEW] Kane & Lynch: Dead Men: Like a Tarantino movie, not for the kids

With all the first-person shooting games hitting store shelves this holiday season, it's kind of refreshing to have a high concept third-person action shooting game. Kane & Lynch has been a buzzed about game for the last six months and it's finally arrived, but does it live up to the hype?

The game begins with you controlling Kane, a convict on his way to death row. All of the sudden there's a big explosion, and you're character is laying on his back dazed and confused about what's going on. You see that you're prison mate, Lynch, is blasting on guards and yelling at you to get up. He gives you a shot of adrenaline, you get up and start running with Lynch and a group of paramilitary soldiers in the middle of Los Angeles. When you finally escape the cops and SWAT teams chasing you around the city, you're brought to a warehouse where you meet with The 7; a mysterious group that you apparently used to be a part of. They claim that you jacked a bunch of loot from them and hid before you went off to prison. Now the group wants the money and if you don't deliver? Yeah, The 7 has your wife and daughter and will kill them if you don't get the job done. And Lynch will be joining to make sure you're doing all that you can and giving The 7 updates periodically. And so the game begins.

While the story is a good one, and would make for a great Hollywood film, the game play makes this tough to get through. There's a variety of weapons to choose from in the game ranging from pistols and submachine guns to rocket launchers and sniper rifles. The problem is, it's always a challenge during a fire fight. You're supposed to be able to cover by walking straight towards a wall or ducking behind a wall but it hardly ever happens on the first try. You're just standing there with your nose to the wall or in the open getting blasted on by your enemies. Another issue I was having is with aiming. When I have my sights on an enemy, after the first shot, my aim goes way up or to the side, of my target. Sure, it could be that the developers we're just trying to add some realism by giving the guns a little kickback, but this was absolutely ridiculous and frustrating. Another aspect of the game that was a bit frustrating was the squad control. For most of the levels, you control a squad of four characters and you can command them to follow you, stay put, or attack at will. Which is fine, but sometimes my guys wouldn't obey my commands because they were stuck behind a wall or desk and couldn't move. In one instance, one of my guys got stuck on the third floor of a hotel, and I had to go up three flights of stairs to go get him, so we could get on the elevator on the bottom floor. There are some really cool scenes and sequences to play through (especially the club scene), it's just the game play makes it really tough to fully enjoy.

Like I said the overall story is good, but the game's dialogue was a bit extreme. It seemed like every other word was an F-word. We're already murdering dozens of cops; do we need to put an f-bomb between every syllable as well? Graphically, the game isn't eye-popping, and it actually looks like something that could be run on a PS2 or the original Xbox. The online component of the game is pretty imaginative though. You have two teams who are charged with getting as much money and possessions as possible in a certain time limit without getting blasted. The twist is that at the end of the round, you're supposed to split the loot with the team, but you have the option of keeping the spoils to yourself by killing your team mates. Problem is, if you do that, your team mate will respawn as part of the other team. Can you handle that? Still, even in the online mode, the game play problems are still persistent and you may end up getting frustrated and not playing the game again.

Q's Rating: 3 out of 5

Gamer 2.0: 5.9 out of 10

Gametrailers: 8.0 out of 10