Tried out Kane & Lynch as someone recommended it to me, I wasn’t expecting much but was prepared to be surprised… I wasn’t, the graphics are quite good, nice lighting and textures. The story also seems believable and there are some scenes early on which feel pretty good to play, mainly where you’re hanging out the back of a van mashing fully automatic fire into cop cars.

The main problem with Kane & Lynch however is apparent straight away, the control system and interface are terrible. Firstly the game seems to want you to use it’s cover system as bullets are flying at you from every angle and pretty mercilessly. But the game’s cover system is hard to use and cover is not easy to find, also the game makes a point of only letting you use cover on certain objects and only right at the edge of that object.

It seems also like the game wants you to use Lynch and the other goons who come and go as part of your “squad” you can tell them to attack targets or go to certain places. However, because the game wants you to use cover so much but gives you little not matter where you tell your cronies to go or what to do invariably they either get shot to shit or they get in your way. For example, I decided to run down some stairs only to realise that I was getting destroyed by enemy fire and promptly ran back out. The AI in it’s infinite wisdom decided to follow me down after I had already come back up and get themselves slaughtered, all 4 of my buddies dead and needing revival under a hail of bullets, I’ll let you guess how that went.

Another thing I had a problem with was lazy level design and bad playtesting, there is a level where you have to get out of a club with Lynch carrying a hostage, the club is full of people and the security guards appear out of nowhere, which whilst annoying would not be so much of a problem if Lynch could take more than 1 bullet without you failing the mission. Then to top things off, when you get to the end she runs away and you have to do exactly the same sequence again.

There was also a level where I had to shoot the driver of a massive truck, before it squished my daughter, I shit you not it took at least 50 tries. The guns in the game just aren’t accurate enough. That was terribly annoying.

Having said all these bad things about it though I can’t shake this urge to play it some more, I want to continue the story… Go figure.