Reviews// Kane & Lynch (Xbox 360)

Visually the game is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, the main characters have highly detailed skin and wrinkled clothing textures. Body movement is well animated whether running, firing or taking cover. In cut scenes, they suffer from eyes and mouths that seem to glow - a common problem in many games - and they have what I like to call Playmobil hair. Facial animation and lip syncing is also below par, but during gameplay the characters deliver the visual goods. The overall style is communicated well, and the locales – be they high security prisons, the skyscrapers of Tokyo, the streets of Havana or Cuban jungles - they're varied and thankfully not hackneyed.

On the other hand, the scenery quality swings between good and shockingly bad. Take the early scene in a bank vault, whose walls are the flat, mottled grey reminiscent of PS1 games, lacking any next-gen shading to bring them to life. Then there are the many occasions of visible pop-up and blurry textures pinging to high resolution. Scene dressing also runs the gamut, from sparse, perfectly cuboid rooms and empty hallways, to streets littered with benches, plants, cars and store fronts.

Incidental characters and enemies could really do with a bit more variation too – the aforementioned nightclub dancefloor appears to be awash with clones, as do the prison and office scenes. During fire fights, bystanders run and cower convincingly unless they're outside of the current scene. You'll often witness characters in an adjacent room or street that are standing immobile and unaware of the carnage unfolding around them. Clearly there are invisible trip wires you must cross to trigger their response, shattering the illusion of a living world and supplanting it with characters from Bodysnatchers.

On the gameplay front, as a plain old one-man shooter it's more than accomplished and on a par with Criterion's excellent Black. However, the game's raison d'etre as a squad-based shooter, while initially impressive, falls at the second hurdle. At the first hurdle, your team follow commands and move where directed, taking cover. Great, it all seems pretty dandy until you send them into unknown territory, where fire comes from multiple directions. The team may look for alternative cover, but never fall back to a safer location, so you're left to cross open ground to revive them, often dying yourself. This isn't meant to be some kindergarten simulation. Your role is to head up a team of seasoned killers, but instead it feels like you're this evening's babysitter, albeit with guns and RPGs. As the loss of a team member ends the game, it's often better to instruct them to provide covering fire from a distant, sheltered location. Even this leads to hair-pulling moments (a feat, given this writer's lack of thatch) as the dumbass AI occasionally ignores this command and has them running out into a barrage of hot lead – it's as though they actually want to get themselves into trouble.

For a game that sells itself on its tactical, squad-based approach, this is a serious problem. You just can't rely on your team to take care of themselves. It's just easier to instruct them to hold back while you clear the way, moving them forward to a safe position as you progress. Even this isn't always foolproof – like the undead bystanders, enemy waves are triggered when you cross one of the game's invisible trip wires. If a wave of troops outflanks you, your unresponsive team can easily be killed in a blizzard of crossfire. The only certain way to make progress is trial and error, dying and restarting a scene - a mind-boiling situation when the first of many challenges in a scene is to take out a heavily-armed gunship with rocket launchers scattered (as in, you have to spend a lot of time running) around the area.

From a longevity point of view, this is a game that could really do to check out some of those e-mails I keep getting, because it really doesn't love you long time. Despite playing scenes repeatedly because of the frustrating trial and error "feature", I had the game in the bag, front to back inside eight hours - and that's both endings.

To counter this a little, there's the online multiplayer mode, though Kane and Lynch offers just one mode - Fragile Alliance - so it is only a little. Amazingly it doesn't take the usual form of a deathmatch, capture the flag or king of the hill. Instead, you work with other players to carry out a heist, splitting the loot amongst you. However, at any point you can choose to turn traitor, killing and taking other player's cash. Doing this makes you a more valuable target for other players, while the victim returns to the game as a cop, gaining a finder's fee on any returned loot. It's refreshing to see some thought being put into online play, instead of stumping for the tired old dames of multiplayer.

[i]SPOnG Score: 57%

Despite high production values, some fabulous scenes, great audio and specular gunfights, Kane and Lynch has unforgiveable flaws. If you can live with the failings of the squad behaviour, it works well as a one-man shooter, but it's much too short and still you have to put up with the trial and error - not to mention babysitting the moron NPCs on the team. It certainly looks like Kane and Lynch is touch-and-go in the delivery room. A second outing after getting past teething will definitely be something to look for.[/i]