It’s 3:00 AM, and my head is fuzzy. The lights are streaky blurs of color and they sting my eyes. There are gunshots coming from all over, but I’ve got to stay focused. Coffin Ed Johnson is moments away from bleeding to death and I’m trapped behind a concrete roadblock on the other side of the street.
This was my experience with Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. Coffin Ed had been on me for months to play this game, but I never got around to it. One day, it comes up on sale for $5 on Steam, so he buys it for me and that pretty much settles the matter. We load up a cooperative story mode game on the Hard setting, and from that point on, it’s confusion, urgency, and gunfire for the rest of the night.
Kane and Lynch 2 is the most intense game I’ve ever played. At no point did I feel safe or secure enough to stand around looking at things. The pressure was on from the moment the game began until the abrupt—almost startling—appearance of the credits in the sans-cut-scene ending. We took turns being the guy bleeding to death, and we died a lot, but it never broke the pace. That’s the best thing about this game. Even during the down-time between gunfights and chases, there’s a sense of urgency, of being totally fucked if you don’t get to the next area fast, and of probably still being fucked if you do.
Despite the constant pressure, I never felt fatigued, nor did I ever find myself desensitized to the chaotic mess through which Coffin Ed Johnson and I were fighting. What makes this pacing possible is the general objective of the game. In most shooters, first-person or third, cover-based or not, the objective is something like “defeat the enemy and get the thing,” or “stop the enemy from killing all the people,” or the ubiquitous “save the guy.”
Kane & Lynch 2 only has one real objective: “get the fuck out of there.” There is one moment in which a guy must be saved (it’s actually a girl), but that’s pretty brief. It stops being the objective shortly after it begins to be, and then it’s back to getting the fuck out. The fact that there are people coming for you constantly, that it’s not safe anywhere, creates a necessity to escape that in turn fuels the intensity of the game.
One of the greatest things about Kane & Lynch 2 is the camaraderie it creates. When Coffin Ed Johnson took over Kane in the first chapter of the game, he was just Player 2 and I was trying to kill the faceless mooks quicker than him. But due to a seemingly minor incident that occurs at the end of the chapter, the events of the rest of the game become much more hostile. Starting in the second chapter, it appears that everyone in Shanghai wants you dead and they have guns with which to make it happen. The codependency and vulnerability inherent in the gameplay mechanics required me to reevaluate my relationship with Coffin Ed Johnson, and think of him not as Player 2, but as my partner—my survival was dependent on his ability to cover the side of the map that I wasn’t looking at, and to notice when I was downed by enemy fire—which is frequent—and get across to me so he can pick me up.
Other games, such as Left4Dead, have similar mechanics that are extremely frustrating when you have bad teammates and equally rewarding when your team is good. In this case, it was never really frustrating or rewarding—it was just vital. Something about the dynamics of the cooperative system prevented me from becoming irritated when Coffin Ed Johnson died repeatedly in the same firefight and kept me from feeling bad when I was the one dying repeatedly. Throughout the entire experience, I trusted him, and assumed that he trusted me.
The last element that makes this game worthwhile is that of theme and presentation. Kane and Lynch are hardened, gritty criminals that do what they must to survive. They don’t make philosophical speeches, and they don’t question the morality of what they do. Sometimes, they make bad decisions, but they don’t fuss about it. Kane might shout “What the hell were you thinking,” but he doesn’t deliberate over whether or not Lynch was morally justified in blowing some guy’s face off. He’s more concerned with whether or not the execution is going to bring legion of fresh cops in to shoot at them. It’s clear that they care about each other, though, and about some peripheral characters, and the way it’s handled fleshes them out well. Kane and Lynch come off as seedy and unethical, but not two-dimensional.
At various points of the game, the player experiences a torture scene, several executions, and an entire chapter in which the main characters end up running around naked. IO Interactive is not afraid to show the story as it is. This level of realism—not counting the gameplay mechanics—combined with the well-implemented shaky camera, believable characters, and pacing make Kane & Lynch 2 one of the most immersive games I’ve ever played, in addition to being the most intense.
I didn’t like everything about it, however. The gameplay mechanics were, overall, subpar. The cover-based shooting added to the tenseness and the sense of urgency, but was not as fun as it has been in other shooters. Something about it felt unpolished and clunky. I frequently found myself stuck to a piece of cover that I wanted to move away from, or unable to aim at an enemy because the camera thought the interposing terrain was more interesting. We had to restart the game a couple times, once because my bullets suddenly became completely harmless, and another time because we both got suddenly disconnected—but only from the game session—in the middle of a chapter. When I was downed, I had to repeatedly tap E to keep from dying while Coffin Ed Johnson made his way over to me to pick me back up, similar to the “downed” mechanic in Left4Dead. Unlike in Left4Dead, however, there is no indicator when your partner is downed unless he is in your field of vision, in which case you can see a depleting red bar.
Sometimes, I would hammer the E key for nearly a minute, while Coffin Ed Johnson was busy with a firefight and didn’t notice I was downed mere inches away—and he should not be expected to, as intense as those firefights could be. A simple voice file saying “I’m down” or a temporary icon on the screen would have solved that problem. On the other hand, it did intensify the dependency on your teammate, strengthening the bond of camaraderie, but the irritation outweighs the benefit in this case.
Overall, my experience with Kane & Lynch 2 was positive. I don’t think I will replay it, except to drag someone else along for the ride, but as an experience, it was outstanding. I highly recommend playing it with a buddy on the Hard setting. I don’t think I would have had fun with it on single player or on Normal difficulty, but approaching exactly as I did, it was compelling and well worth it.
Early reviews panned Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, mostly for the shortness of the game. Many reviewers insisted that considering the length, the game was not worth full price. This, then, may be the right time to buy, as Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is available on Steam for $19.99, and for Xbox 360
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