Ugly. Unpleasant. Cruel. Nasty. Mean. Loud. There are many words to describe Kane & Lynch 2, and none of them are positive in the traditional sense. It is an exercise in ugliness and cruel violence. The camera shakes and wobbles, and sprinting in the game basically means sacrificing any form visual information about where you are and what's around you. Combat is difficult, as the two main characters are constantly screaming at each other and the sound of barrages of gunfire ricocheting off your cover is distracting and overwhelming. The game's most explosive section, in which you're in a helicopter armed with an LMG, is near incomprehensible; the only way to survive is with a constant stream of gunfire directed in front of you, loud and bright, all while the camera is repeatedly distorted and pixelated by the damage you're taking, and the only thing that matters is seeing hit markers on your screen. You can barely make out your enemy, and by the glimpses of office workers sprinting to safety, away from your reign of terror, it's more than likely you've ripped a few innocent people to shreds in your efforts to escape the law alive. Kane & Lynch 2 is more of an interactive Liveleak video than a traditional shooter video game.
If you are a dumb person, you might hear me describe this game and think it is bad. You would think this because you are dumb. I, dear readers, am not dumb. Kane & Lynch 2 is a masterful postmodern deconstruction of the shooter genre. It examines the consequences of what would ACTUALLY happen should two white guys go into a foreign country and start mowing down anyone who gets in their way, the basis for so many shooters of the time?
The aesthetic and atmosphere is unmatched. Like I said, it's more like a liveleak video than a shooter. Gore is pixellated, the audio regularly peaks and the camera distorts with damage, Kane and Lynch regularly yell out to each other with no subtitles present; Lynch will even rant to himself, barely audible, about how he needs his meds, or he can't see shit, or how fucked everything is. What little music there is is heard through speakers of DVD stores and restaurants. It's oppressive, it's dark, it's overwhelming, and it is an incredible deconstruction of and meditation on the voyeuristic appeal of violence and crime in games and media. For a game that is so ugly, unpleasant, and scummy, it does its job beautifully.
If you are a dumb person, you might hear me describe this game and think it is bad. You would think this because you are dumb. I, dear readers, am not dumb. Kane & Lynch 2 is a masterful postmodern deconstruction of the shooter genre. It examines the consequences of what would ACTUALLY happen should two white guys go into a foreign country and start mowing down anyone who gets in their way, the basis for so many shooters of the time?
The aesthetic and atmosphere is unmatched. Like I said, it's more like a liveleak video than a shooter. Gore is pixellated, the audio regularly peaks and the camera distorts with damage, Kane and Lynch regularly yell out to each other with no subtitles present; Lynch will even rant to himself, barely audible, about how he needs his meds, or he can't see shit, or how fucked everything is. What little music there is is heard through speakers of DVD stores and restaurants. It's oppressive, it's dark, it's overwhelming, and it is an incredible deconstruction of and meditation on the voyeuristic appeal of violence and crime in games and media. For a game that is so ugly, unpleasant, and scummy, it does its job beautifully.