Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is a third-person shooter developed by IO Interactive and published by Square Enix Europe. It is the second game in the Kane & Lynch series, and was released in August 2010. Players control Lynch (Kane in one part and in co-op) in his mad dash across Shanghai.

Why They're Still Dead Men

 * 1) The game tries to imitate the found footage style, even having pixelated censorship on nudity and explicit gore. And while it's not a bad and in fact is a pretty original idea for a third person shooter, the game's camera can be pretty jarring during gameplay and cutscenes, making the game pretty uncomfortable and even nauseating at times. It also has the side effect of overtaxing the game engine, resulting in periodic framerate drops. Fortunately, you can turn off the shaky cam.
 * 2) Gameplay is generic and uninspired since it plays like every generic third-person shooter from the Xbox 360-era.
 * 3) There are moments when game makes you think that there is a possible stealth approach (most notably the last level) to certain situations, however it only seems so, since firefights are still scripted.
 * 4) The AI is braindead, and only gets more challenging due to them getting better weapons. They even become suicidal, rushing in on you which eventually ends up killing you.
 * 5) While some weapons are pretty good (mostly the shotguns and assault rifles), many of them suck. SMGs are nearly impossible to play with, especially on higher difficulties, since they have giant circles of the aim and bullets just spray around and most of the pistols do really weak damage.
 * 6) Terrible gunplay due to how generic the gameplay is, the cover-system (BQ #9), the crosshairs on some guns, and the fact that the guns have no tracers, instead every time you hit an enemy you get a hitmarker.
 * 7) * It's so bad that it makes the second level (See BQ#10), where you have to defend Glazer's car from a ton of enemies, IMPOSSIBLE. It's so bad that players like DX couldn't beat it and almost gave up entirely.
 * 8) Horrible pacing with gun fights being dished out and being dragged out so much. If you try to rush enemies, you will always end up dying, making the game worse and more infuriating.
 * 9) Most of the levels are uninspired and short. Some even feel like mazes and are way too linear. What doesn't help either is the fact that original game had more unique and original levels, situations and locations.
 * 10) Like the original game, getting out of cover still does not work very well. While it does at least have an actual cover button this time around, pressing the button does not work either.
 * 11) The extreme difficulty is horribly unfair, as the enemies can kill you with only one or two shots and have perfect accuracy from a far distance, and taking in count that the cover and shooting mechanics are not the best ones due to how poorly they were programmed, it just gets much worse. It even gets to the point that some missions can be almost impossible to complete due to the nature of them, like the second mission where you have to defend the limo from an ambush.
 * 12) Despite that Kane and Lynch still have the same personalities, in this game they feel more like a typical crime action duo, rather than sporting more unique traits like in the previous game.
 * 13) The game is only about four hours long.
 * 14) Absolutely awful and non-existent ending, as the game abruptly fades to black once you escape from Shanghai on a airport.
 * 15) Visual effects in the game are often blurry and pixilated due to the documentary style it uses, to the point that it resembles a old video from LiveLeak or early YouTube.
 * 16) Unlike the predecessor, the PC version had no local co-op mode, but only LAN and Online Play instead.
 * 17) The game looks really cheap with a lot of low quality textures and cheap character models.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The multiplayer can be fun, which sadly died out due to the game's very low player-base (even at launch).
 * 2) The story is alright, minus the ending.
 * 3) Some of the guns like the LMGs sound brutal and makes the gun fights actually feel visceral.
 * 4) Amazing soundtrack with both cherry C-pop and creepy background ambience composed by Mona Mur.
 * 5) While this game lacks what original had and is pretty different in many ways, it still does a good job at being a really gritty and dark crime thriller.

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