A few hours ago, I got back home from my two week trip to the UK, and one of the first things I did once I got back home was sit down and start playing Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. I ordered this game on eBay two months ago (along with Deadly Premonition and some Wii Remotes) after being intrigued by it for over a year, but it never arrived, so I was glad to find the game at a CeX in Coventry. It took me five or six hours to beat this game in two back-to-back sittings, but I really can't wait to go back and play it again, because Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days was an incredible experience that really felt nothing like anything else I've played before. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days has been polarizing since its release (although it has been reevaluated to some extent recently), and the main reason for that is its presentation. This game is a total assault on the senses, as it wallows in the ugliness and depravity of its titular protagonists by having the neon-lit Shanghai be seen through shaky low-res camcorders, pixelated gore and nudity, blinding amounts of bokeh, and discordant jump cuts.

The bold and experimental approach that Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days takes to telling its story of two awful men making an already bad situation worse and worse makes the game feel incredibly oppressive, uncomfortable, and flat-out nasty, and that makes the otherwise straightforward cover shooter gunplay feel so much more intense and visceral, along with the destructible environments, terrified civilians running through gunfire, and especially Mona Mur's terrific score being mixed with the game's mostly diegetic soundscape. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days was a phenomenal and relentlessly gritty game, and while I initially wasn't interested in playing the first game, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, I think I might actually give it a go at some point after seeing TV Hed PE praise it on Instagram two days ago.