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Kane and Lynch were once dead men, but now they’re dog days. This involves them bang bang shooting guns in the third person cover based style of the era.

It was… okay?

Most shooters go out of their way to make you feel powerful. When you’re doing something right, it is clear you are a god among the peons you are destroying left and right. Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days never makes you feel like this. Even as Spaeth and I played through on Easy, we were dying constantly, and I never felt like I was completely in control of what was going on.

Part of the reason for this is the visual style, which is the element that most people were paying attention to regarding this game. The game goes all out to look like it’s a youtube video, or something similar, with “buffering” screens instead of load screens, lots of shaky cam, and shitty effects over the action like it was recorded on a tiny pocket camera. It does look really striking at first, so in that regard, they completely succeed.

It also manages to completely disorient you at every turn. Often, I’d run at someone, planning on grabbing them, and would get completely turned around, unsure where the enemies were, and then shot in the back. Similarly, the weapons are also disorienting. None of them are very accurate, except for the rare few rifles you find near the end of the game. You never feel like you can really shoot a target, so you’re aiming wildly, trying to connect. The game never gives you options like grenades to solve difficult situations, either. You can throw things like fire extinguishers and shoot them, but often they barely work like a good grenade would in a Gears or Halo, and since you can only carry one and are slowed down when you’re hauling them around, it’s easy to say “Fuck this” and not even use them.

All of this leads to a feeling of helplessness in the game. You feel like some shitty criminals on the run, not some heroes. You’re barely keeping it together. You know how to fire a gun, but it isn’t your life. It’s just something you have to do, and you’ve never really perfected the art. The dialog, too, is fairly realistic. Lots of “fuck this, shit, going to kill you fuckers!” sort of uninspired but realistic sorts of combat dialog. It really does work. The people who made this game were attempting to set a tone, and I feel like they did. It’s uneven in places: the game can’t seem to decide if there’s actually a cameraman following you, or if it’s just a gimmick, for instance. Sometimes NPCs interact with the “cameraman,” and sometimes there’s obviously nobody there. Still, it does work.

I just don’t think it’s that fun to play. I do come to shooters for story, occasionally, but I don’t come to shooters for a feeling of helplessness. When, even on easy, I feel like I’m dying to bullshit deaths constantly, something is wrong. The fact that the combat never really varies itself through the whole story doesn’t help either. They slowly dole out more and more accurate guns, but the basic combat is the same. It also doesn’t help that, for a game attempting to have a story, the story itself is so nonsensical. There are times where it seems clear that they just had to add another level. There’s no good reason for Kane and Lynch to run the base of the guy trying to kill them, for instance. It’s just there because you have to have a big finale. It breaks character for these guys to do something like that. It really does.

The game’s short, and I’ve certainly played worse games, but it’s nothing special. Fragile Alliance, the multiplayer mode, is really creative, and could be tons of fun in a game with better shooting mechanics. As it is, though, it’s only a momentary novelty, because you simply don’t want to play the mechanics of this game any more than you have to. It’s a rental-quality game, sure, but I could suggest many better and more fun experiences for that, such as, say Singularity or Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. Turn to one of those first, and rent this one only if you have a co-op buddy who really likes gritty crime stories. Then you might have a bit of fun.