Kane and Lynch sells 1 million copies. Much ado about nothing.

[halbarad]

I find most people say it's bad without even playing on it. I enjoy Kane & Lynch. The story of the game is better than most games on the 360 (Mass Effect, Bioshock and Assassins Creed being some of the few that can compete with it).
The story doesn't stick to the same lines that most others seem to stick to. The fact that you can either get a bad ending or a... well a bad ending.

Yes, the gameplay could be improved. But no game is perfect. And i'm a big story fan in games.

Grandboy : Why does adrenaline revive you? Well, i'm gonna take a wild stab here. It's a game.
Little things like that need to be excused and not nit-picked by pretencious people like yourself. The fact of the matter is, every single game on the market has some stupid method of reviving or keeping somebody alive. Mainly because if a game became 100% realistic, it would be about as fun as anal intrusion with a donkeys cock.

 

[alexhayter86]

New feature in games: realistic healing.

You get shot by a terrorist. You have to first call an ambulance, then wait twenty minutes for it to come. Apply pressure on the wound by pushing down the right thumbstick. Get into the ambulance, and get driven to the hospital. All in real-time, of course. The screen blacks out for 10 hours as the operation to save your life begins.

Tragedy; the bullet hit your spine: you're going to survive, but you'll be wheelchair bound for the rest of the game. 12 months of hard drinking pass by (all in real-time, of course) and your life slowly fades into depression.

Cheryl, the love of your life, leaves you, and takes the dog with her. You go to the closet and pick up your magnum: the last gun to touch your hands. You shoot yourself in the face. Game over. And you actually die.

Doesn't sound like much fun, really.

 

[J-Val]

I find most people say it's bad without even playing on it. I enjoy Kane & Lynch. The story of the game is better than most games on the 360 (Mass Effect, Bioshock and Assassins Creed being some of the few that can compete with it).

I think you mean "surpass" rather than "compete". Mass Effect makes Kane & L's story look like the script to a Schwarzenegger film, and Assassin's Creed rather-distracting-but-original Sci-Fi touch also trounces it. And then of course, not even Mass Effect can (probably) touch BioShock when it comes to story.
TO be honest, I find K & L's story very bland and unoriginal, so I really don't understand why people praise it. It seems that the requirements to have a "well developed" story nowadays are to actually contain dialogue.
"Mysterious crime Brotherhood! Revenge! Guns!"

Yes, the gameplay could be improved. But no game is perfect. And i'm a big story fan in games.

No game may be perfect, but K & L is anything but. It's rather gritty-yet-not-gritty story definetely doesn't excuse the mediocre gameplay.

Grandboy : Why does adrenaline revive you? Well, i'm gonna take a wild stab here. But IT'S A GAME.
Little things like that need to be excused and not nit-picked by pretencious people like yourself.

Then why not a Med-Kit, or something more plausible? Adrenaline doesn't heal wounds.
And a game, just like any other medium, does get nit-picked. It's the small things that produce a believable atmosphere.

 

[brkl]

Med-Kits are exactly as plausible as adrenaline: not at all.

Have you played the game through? It's not about what you seem to think it's about.

 

[SecretLemur]

This argument about whether or not K&L is any good highlights one of the biggest pitfalls in critical journalism. Just because something is objectively bad doesn't mean people won't enjoy it (hello, Chuck and Larry [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0762107/]). If you look at it objectively, with a critical eye towards both the "art" (by which I mean story, presentation, gameplay) and the tech (in this case, graphics, consistency of behavior, etc), then K&L is awful. Even if the "plot" is kind of original, the presentation and the writing behind it is very poor.

An involving story should have at least one character that the player/reader/watcher can be sympathetic to, even if he's a complete tool. Look at Tony Soprano. He's a murderer, liar, thief and adulterer. Somehow, though, we like him. Kane and Lynch? By the time I was done with it, I was hoping that they would both die in the end.

From a tech standpoint, K&L is crap too, especially in the context of what is currently state of the art. The framerate is awful. The environment is blocky. The controls are squishy and poorly arranged. I had to retrain myself to be able to play it as it just ignores shooter conventions in it's control scheme. Frankly, the engine looks really dated.

There's a big difference between "I hate it" and "it's bad" and there's also a difference between "I like it" and "it's good". Objectively speaking, Godzilla movies and the new Bionic Woman TV show are bad (I think miss summers actually got cancelled), but I enjoy the heck out of both of them. And "War and Peace" might be a great novel, but I won't be reading it.

So, to those of you who like K&L: good for you. With a million copies sold, I hope somebody who dropped that $60 on it is having fun. That means that it wasn't a complete and total waste. But don't kid yourselves, it's not good.

 

[brkl]

I didn't enjoy Kane & Lynch in some mindless way like I might Chuch and Larry (probably not though), I enjoyed it because it tries to further the art form and dares to be different. It has more worth, in my opinion, than celebrated titles like Gears of War, even if the gameplay is not quite as polished. I resent the suggestion that I lack objectivity if I can recognize the good qualities of the game rather than just thrashing it.

 

[richasr]

I think people still bought it because of the hype and the fact that it's advertised everywhere (possibly because the producers KNOW its a poorly made game), and they maybe couldnt believe the reviews, who knows in the end.

I played it properly for the first time, on an Xbox Elite through a 32 inch HD TV and my initial impressions were "how old is this game really?", it did look a few years old, the graphics weren't as good as they maybe should or could have been.

Playing it further and it also seemed the controls were oddly placed and maybe awkward. Struggling to get used to the controls, the actual movement and fluidity of the character you control was very rigid and stiff, it was hard to even aim at people.

I guess after a few levels of this you get sick of it, because it's so irritating.

Having said all this, the story did seem quite a worthwhile one, and had the rest of the game lived up to its hype, or maybe just been better at all, it wouldn't suffer.

I've heard there's going to be a trilogy despite the poor result of this first game, well I can only hope the next game is not "half-arsed"

 

[m_jim]

Lemur- I have a hard time buying your "this game is objectively bad" argument. Sure, I wasn't as floored by the graphics as I was by Gears of War or Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, but the night club scene was pretty impressive. And the setpiece where you rappel into the building to kill the fellow with the briefcase and then have to escape was a well-designed, memorable level. As for your problems with the dialog and story, I enjoyed the Michael Mann vibe. It's a matter of taste.
This is an *average* game by all accounts. It's got some graphical flaws and gameplay issues. It's not the best game of the year, but it's worth checking out for what it does right. Just chill with your verdicts from on high about what is "objectively good or bad."

 

[SecretLemur]

m_jim: I will "chill" when game companies stop producing crap and telling us how awesome it is. Honestly, I didn't have a big problem with the actual graphics. They looked OK. The problem is that a game with just "OK" graphics should have a solid and consistent framerate. K&L does not. The graphic engine for the game is poorly tuned and that fact is horribly apparent from the beginning escape scene. That is bad. A (supposedly) state of the art game on a state of the art console should not have framerate issues *and* merely "ok" graphics.

My issue with the story is not the Michael Mann vibe. Mr. Mann produces excellent movies with excellent scripts and decent cinematography. My issue with the story is that the writing is gawdawful. It could have been churned out by any first year english student without a thesaurus because just about half of the dialog is the F-word. Crikey, Scarface didn't curse that much. The sequence of events in the story may be creative, but the presentation is not. Any student that turned in that script would get marked down for single dimensional characters, excessive cursing (to the point of parody) and probably get a little note from the teacher asking if maybe they'd be more suited to a career in automotive repair.

And you're right: it is a matter of taste. I said as much in my closing. I like plenty of poorly produced media. But, as much as I enjoyed watching it, I'm not going to kid myself by trying to pretend that the latest incarnation of the Bionic Woman was any good (so bad they didn't even let it finish a season). Hey, maybe the control issues don't bother you: great. Maybe the herky jerky framerate doesn't give you a splitting headache: great. And maybe the night club scene didn't make you feel like you know what it is to be epileptic: good for you. As I said: I'm glad someone is enjoying the game. And maybe I'm being a little harsh when I say that it's all bad. Maybe objectively, when you add all the bad and good together, you end up with something that is just mediocre. But, as a matter of taste, I don't like playing mediocre. Not for $60, anyway. The Bionic Woman, at least, was free.

They're supposedly making a movie of this game. Now, if Michale Mann directed it and got a competent script writer, I'd watch it and I expect I would enjoy it.