I first played this game in about 2013 on the PS3. I thought it was shit.
Hindsight and some growth on my part, as well as getting to the point where this game legitimately costs a buck has enabled me to see this game through the lens of being more along the lines of something like Busby Visits the James Turrell retrosective than Gears of War or Uncharted.
I have to say, I've come to really like the art style. Yes, it gave me multiple headaches, but it's unique, and I really like the way they've replicated compression artefacts. It works well with the "world is a fuck" nature of the game.
And the vile, ugly nature of the whole game i do get is the point. There's times with some games where people will say "oh, it's not meant to be fun" and I don't buy it, but Kane and Lynch 2 definetly is not meant to be fun. It's wholly unpleasant from start to finish.
Sadly I think it's biggest flaw sort of draws from this, because I think despite the game's remarkably short length, it can't keep it up. It absolutely peaks at the end of the second act where you start shooting up shanghai naked and bleeding from torture, and from then it basically becomes a blockbuster shooter and it frankly just gets a bit dull.
By hour 3 you end up in huge arenas full of identical enemies which do generic 7th Gen TPS potshotting from half height cover, whilst your weapon options are hilariously innacurate at range and you have only environmental hazards as an option for flusihng them out of cover. It sucks, and the gameplay, whilst never good, is by far at its strongest in the small environments of the first half of the game, where it feels more intimate and chaotic.
And that's my other main problem, honestly the most significant gripe i have with this thing as an art project - the portrayal of violence isn't "intimate" enough, and the scores of people being gunned down in the streets is a bit laughable, and I feel the approach of a game like the last of us, where there's more of a focus on intimate, cruel violence against individuals rather than just straight up massacres, would have worked better here. It gets a bit silly.
Speaking of silly, the story's shit. There's no real throughline, for most of it - things just happen to our protags and eventually they shoot the main villain ten seconds after he's first shown on screen. The game ends with them hijacking a plane and just... getting away with it?
I must also say, from an audio standpoint, it falls really hard. The audio mixing is terrible to the point where you can barely hear what the protagonists are saying, there's a score you can barely hear that also isn't good, gun sounds are bad and the voice acting isnt great. I probably wouldn't bring it up if the visual side of this thing wasn't as strong as it was though.
So yeah, Overall, odd, weird, disjointed mess of a game, and a pretty decent exhibit of unpleasantness. Definetly fits into the "unspeakable games" category on the EGS if it's there. As the art thing, it falls apart in the second half and it might be fair to say being outright headache inducing is a flaw, but eh, I at least appreciate the effort here.
So, despite being remarkably shit, I do prefer this over most of the smorgasboard of Gen 7 Third person shooters. Unlike the vast majority of them , you can't say it's not interesting.
Hindsight and some growth on my part, as well as getting to the point where this game legitimately costs a buck has enabled me to see this game through the lens of being more along the lines of something like Busby Visits the James Turrell retrosective than Gears of War or Uncharted.
I have to say, I've come to really like the art style. Yes, it gave me multiple headaches, but it's unique, and I really like the way they've replicated compression artefacts. It works well with the "world is a fuck" nature of the game.
And the vile, ugly nature of the whole game i do get is the point. There's times with some games where people will say "oh, it's not meant to be fun" and I don't buy it, but Kane and Lynch 2 definetly is not meant to be fun. It's wholly unpleasant from start to finish.
Sadly I think it's biggest flaw sort of draws from this, because I think despite the game's remarkably short length, it can't keep it up. It absolutely peaks at the end of the second act where you start shooting up shanghai naked and bleeding from torture, and from then it basically becomes a blockbuster shooter and it frankly just gets a bit dull.
By hour 3 you end up in huge arenas full of identical enemies which do generic 7th Gen TPS potshotting from half height cover, whilst your weapon options are hilariously innacurate at range and you have only environmental hazards as an option for flusihng them out of cover. It sucks, and the gameplay, whilst never good, is by far at its strongest in the small environments of the first half of the game, where it feels more intimate and chaotic.
And that's my other main problem, honestly the most significant gripe i have with this thing as an art project - the portrayal of violence isn't "intimate" enough, and the scores of people being gunned down in the streets is a bit laughable, and I feel the approach of a game like the last of us, where there's more of a focus on intimate, cruel violence against individuals rather than just straight up massacres, would have worked better here. It gets a bit silly.
Speaking of silly, the story's shit. There's no real throughline, for most of it - things just happen to our protags and eventually they shoot the main villain ten seconds after he's first shown on screen. The game ends with them hijacking a plane and just... getting away with it?
I must also say, from an audio standpoint, it falls really hard. The audio mixing is terrible to the point where you can barely hear what the protagonists are saying, there's a score you can barely hear that also isn't good, gun sounds are bad and the voice acting isnt great. I probably wouldn't bring it up if the visual side of this thing wasn't as strong as it was though.
So yeah, Overall, odd, weird, disjointed mess of a game, and a pretty decent exhibit of unpleasantness. Definetly fits into the "unspeakable games" category on the EGS if it's there. As the art thing, it falls apart in the second half and it might be fair to say being outright headache inducing is a flaw, but eh, I at least appreciate the effort here.
So, despite being remarkably shit, I do prefer this over most of the smorgasboard of Gen 7 Third person shooters. Unlike the vast majority of them , you can't say it's not interesting.