Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days Review

The dynamic duo of a hardcore thief and a sociopath return for a second adventure in Shanghai and prove that online coop is a thankful addition, albeit at a price.

Controversies aside, there was honestly nothing special about the original Kane & Lynch.  The characters were there, the plot was there and even the gameplay was there but the pieces of the puzzle never quite seemed to fit.  In Dog Days, developer IO Interactive attempts to create a dynamic experience with impressive stylized graphics, a gritty dramatic story, all the things the first did right and, finally, online coop.  It does come with a price, however, as the coop mode is so riddled with bugs and imbalance that you may want to give this one another go alone.

The story opens in Shanghai with Lynch, now the protagonist of this second tale, deep inside the seedy underbelly of China's organized crime.  He has a big job set up and the payoff is sizeable, so who better to accompany him than his old pal Kane?  Upon arriving in Shanghai, Kane and Lynch go off to do a routine tough guy visit for his boss and the 48 hours that follow are nothing but complete chaos from China's elite.

While the story may sound like overused drivel for a third person shooter, the way it all unfolds is anything but.  Lynch's character is no longer an overexcited wreck of a man but that of a compassionate partner both to friend Kane and his girlfriend.  Character development and emotions are real and the style in which the camera follows us along like it's some reality TV cameraman adds to the immersion.  The writers and art directors should be commended on a job well done and for bringing emotion and complexity to the franchise.

Gameplay, on the other hand, could use a little work.  Dog Days is still a third person shooter, but the view has moved much closer to the character you control (for most that will be Lynch) and cover is more dynamic with destructable environments and more confined areas.  All of this is good and well compared to the first, but for some reason your characters are no longer safe while in cover.  I don't see the purpose of having a cover mechanic if you can get shot while in cover, it seems to defeat the purpose.  Destructible cover is tense and works in a title like this, but getting shot from cover when you are surrounded makes no sense.  I was even shocked to see that when moving from cover to cover, a la many cover based shooters, you are also vulnerable during the transition.  Additionally things that should be quick, like picking up guns and switching them, seem to have long drawn out animations that can easily get you killed.

Instead of adjusting the way the AI acts or even the number of enemies that spawn, Dog Days simply boosts the strength of your enemies and weakens you to adjust for difficulty.  I played multiple missions on all four difficulties and found nearly no difference between them, save that I could take much more damage and kill enemies in far fewer bullets in the easier settings.  Giving the enemy so much of an advantage that the fight is unfair is not how I like difficulty to be adjusted these days and with the onslaught of enemies in almost every section, it gets frustrating.  My biggest problem is that for most gamers, adjusting the difficulty won't much help them to complete a difficult part - if it was hard on one difficulty it will be hard on another and vice-versa.