Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days

Format PC

Developer Io Interactive

Publisher Eidos Interactive

Genre Shoot 'em Up, Action

3 Comments

Seeing Kane and Lynch back on screen dredges up some contradictory emotions. The original third-person crime spree shooter was, at best, mediocre. An ineffectual attempt at coordinating chaos in a criminal gang. It was meh.

But it was also grimly funny, had character and, if you squinted, you could see what devs IO - makers of the phenomenal Hitman games - were attempting to do. So I was squinting at Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, and nearly missed what all the fuss was about.

This time you're playing Lynch, the funny, psychotic henchman of the original game. The original's protagonist, Kane, is along for the ride, shadowing the balding madman's journey through two very bad days in the Shanghai underworld. Lynch was always the better character in the original game. Held together with drugs and prone to hallucinations that turn people into dog-headed policemen - what's not to love?

It's Lynch's plan that drags Kane to Shanghai. The pair became unlikely allies in the first game when they were double-crossed by a powerful criminal gang. It was a messy, movie-inspired shoot-out simulator. The second game follows suit. After a botched gun shipment, the two are left to consider their options in a restaurant. It's during this profanity-laced ponderage that a Chinese SWAT team drops in.

You play from a tight, over-the-shoulder perspective behind Lynch. It's not a pleasant place to be: he has greasy hair, he's wearing a stained wifebeater shirt and sporting a bald spot. IO love anti‑heroes. Agent 47 of their Hitman games would happily use a baby as a silencer in order to shoot a kitten delivering presents to deaf orphans. They've hit on an easy way of making their games stand out by making the heroes as anti as possible. The murderous Lynch pumps a few meaty shotgun blasts at the SWAT team, chatting all the time to an off-camera AI Kane.

Yeah, these guys are crims, but the SWAT team aren't exactly honest, working for an as yet unknown boss, so it's OK to shoot back. They pinwheel from the force of Lynch's shotgun. Some don't die right away, screaming and firing back from the ground. They need be dispatched.

Then I start to notice that the game isn't looking too spectacular. The lights are smeared, like they've been captured on home video. When the action gets more intense, with Lynch ducking behind cover being hammered by enemy bullets, the screen starts breaking up, crumbling behind digital artefacts. This is the hook. IO have gone out of their way to make the game look like this.

Incongruously, considering the two stars are crusty, mangled dinosaurs, IO want Dog Days to feel familiar and modern. The idea is that we consume so much digital media - YouTube videos, etc - we're used to shaky, scratchy and unfocused footage. Applying the effect to a game makes it feel like you're a mixture of observer and participant: when Lynch runs through the levels, it's like he's gone off by himself and you're pelting along behind, trying to keep the camera trained on him like something from The Blair Witch Project.

When he moves to different lighting conditions, the 'camera' adjusts, street lights spreading across the screen. Even the sound has the tinny quality of something playing on a mobile phone. Kane & Lynch 2 comes pre-squinted. It's been YouTubed.

It works, supplementing the action, which feels more immediate than Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. Throughout the restaurant fight, your enemies are never more than ten feet away. It's chaotic, but they move with purpose, diving for cover when necessary and returning fire to keep you suppressed. The screen artefacts start piling up when Lynch is in danger or taking damage - a digital representation of the hallucinations that plague him.

Kane and Lynch move through the chaos, yammering away at each other like a married couple. Kane keeps out of the line of fire. Not only is he fun to listen to, but he backs you up, firing from the side or behind. He's one of the few in-game AI characters I think I could tolerate. They both escape through sheer brute force and disregard for their own safety; tactics take second place to improvisation.

Out into an alleyway, then onto the Shanghai streets, Dog Days genuinely feels like a shakycam video ripped from a website. Art direction in games is something that's maturing; IO realise their city through a mixture of impressive level design and filters. Shanghai, a place I've never visited, feels vital and busy - like Lynch has crashed into someone's holiday video. The YouTube gimmick here works so well that I half expected it to buffer.

The streets are more dangerous than the restaurant, as everyone piles out into the open. A linear battle rips through the area, digital artefacts hammering the screen as Lynch ducks behind parked cars. Shanghai is a dense city; we move through the streets, through tight, awkward buildings and into a construction site. Even though it's a big space, the violence still feels immediate.

Truth be told, the fights aren't a whole lot different from the original game. There was intensity there as well, but it's now been supplemented by improved enemy AI (in Dead Men, your opponents were nothing more than 'shoot me' signs) and a cover system that actually provides cover, rather than leaving you both frozen in one spot and exposed enough to be hit. It's more polished.

In fact, it's been streamlined. IO want K&L2; to be a crowd-pleaser, and are focusing on stripping the annoyances that plagued Dead Men. The aiming has been tightened to remove the floaty, imprecise controls that brought a pot-luck element to the first's firefights. The original PC game demanded that co-op be played on one PC, using a combination of keyboard, mouse and Xbox 360 controller, but that's finally matured into online co-op with a friend controlling Kane.

The multiplayer Fragile Alliance also returns - a betrayal-based co-op game where a team of players rob a bank or gas station, but with a paranoia-fuelling twist that enables you to turn on teammates and take the pot. If this version isn't crippled by Games for Windows Live, it has a chance to make a small, but interesting niche for itself. There's nothing more fun than legitimised team-killing.

If the first game left you cold, should you care about any of this? I put it to IO that this is a sequel that I didn't ever expect to see. They explain that, from their point of view, it sold well, they liked the characters and were stung by the criticism that snowed over the original. They have something to prove and have spent years doggedly perfecting their Hitman games, which have blossomed over four instalments into one of the finest series I've ever played.

It required time and patience from both developers and gamers for Hitman to achieve the heights it reached, and I'm sure they'll get there with Kane & Lynch too - eventually.

PC Gamer