Kane & Lynch review

Good: Fairly fast pacing through most of the levels; each level different enough from the others to keep the game interesting; shooting is not perfectly accurate (as it should not be); no disney-esque ending

Bad: Interesting concept (duality between Kane and Lynch) never really fully fleshed out; gameplay does get redudant after a while; fairly short

The long: While Kane & Lynch delivers a startling fresh idea (allowing the gamer to ‘nearly’ play two characters at once and develop simultaneously, the game never really fleshes out the concept. The game could’ve been a charm had it, at some point, branched out between the paths of being Kane or Lynch, giving you the choice of seeing one backstory versus another.

The game itself is a fairly fun, no-holds barred, typical gunfest, where you are driven, as Kane, to save your daughter and wife. The concept is rather vanilla, but the game does hold its merit in the way you go about trying to save them, hitting up people from the past and looking for clues–one level has you goign through a busy nightclub to get to the owner, another has you repelling down the front of a skyscraper, bombing out a window and raiding the building.

And short: Kane & Lynch delivers some interesting concepts that deliver a little more than half-heartedly. It’s an above-average game that you won’t feel bad about tearing through in a day or two.

Score: 70%

Wonder if they got fired…

The image above is a screenshot that I took when I noticed something interesting–if you click on the image, it’ll take you to a bigger picture. If you look closely, on the right pane of the ‘Games’ folder in Windows Vista, many games (as long as the installation package installed the game and corresponding shortcut) will show the game’s required/recommended game rating in comparison to your system’s rating, in addition to the actual ESRB rating.

For those playing at home, you’ll see that Unreal Tournament 3 has earned an ESRB rating of E, meaing the game possesses “content that may be suitable for ages 3 and older. Contains no material that parents would find inappropriate.”

Looks like my copy of UT3 has me shooting rainbows and unicorn giggles isntead of rockets and flak shells.