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Mixed or average reviews - based on 57 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 308 Ratings

  • Summary: Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is a dark and gritty drama featuring two men, one is a flawed mercenary and the other a medicated psychopath. Forced together on a violent and chaotic path of redemption and revenge, no action is considered too harsh as this volatile partnership is pushed beyond reason in this brutally realistic, character-driven third person action shooter. [Eidos Interactive] Collapse
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 10 out of 57
  2. Negative: 6 out of 57
  1. Kane and Lynch is quite a good crime drama experience and serves as a plausible move away from the Hitman stealth series that IO Interactive is very well known for.
  2. Kane & Lynch is a fun game to fly through in a couple days on "Aspirin" (easy) mode, but not deep or hardcore enough to hold up long term. [Holiday 2007, p.75]
  3. Factor in an exceptionally short single-player campaign, an undercooked tactical squad element and a distinct lack of gameplay variety and it's impossible not to see this as a very big missed opportunity.
  4. Given the subject matter, Kane & Lynch never had a chance of being a fun game, but it had every chance of being a good one. It's not.

See all 57 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 41 out of 78
  2. Negative: 32 out of 78
  1. AshR
    10
    Despite all the gaming nerds out there calling this the worst game of all time. I fully enjoyed the story of this game and the controls really arn't as bad as people are making out and after 10 minutes of playing, you're used to them and already taking advantage. The Music is great, then again anything Jesper Kyd does is like gold. The voice-acting is a lot better than most games out there and the story certainly takes some twists. If you're looking for a game that has action, then this is damn close to being in Michael Mann's "Heat", especially on the Tokoyo levels. Expand
  2. TravisL.
    8
    i'll admit, the graphics are crummy, but the story line, and gameplay are awesome! cool shoot 'em up game. i'd like to see more like this game. Expand
  3. B.G.
    7
    Great characters and story, they're well fleshed out and more three dimensional than the rest. The gameplay is pretty good, the nightclub scene is probably the highlight. Still, there are gameplay flaws, the guns are underwhelming and the cover system isn't as crisp as others. Expand
  4. Sam
    4
    With the badass trailers and the very appealing character concept, I was expecting this game to be IOI's finest since Hitman: Silent Assassin. They proved me wrong. While this game isn't as bad as the Gerstmann sympathizers say, it's still pretty bad. Which is a shame, because IO had everything they needed, every tool to make this game great. They just didn't use them. First of all, the gameplay is trial-and-error based, and is overly frustrating. There's no open-endedness to the game at all, which was what IOI made their name from: letting you decide what you want to do. There's none of that here. You just go around shooting, escorting, and doing what the game tells you to. You don't get to plan out the heists, or any of that. The poorly written script plans it out for you. But the game does its best to keep you from sticking to that. It is a very buggy game. The controls don't do anything to help it, either. The aiming is horrible. You will never hit who you're trying to the first few tries. This applies for every time you attempt to shoot someone. And beyond firing and team commands, they're very hard to use, often involving drawn-out button combinations just to perform a simple action. What's worse is that after you've put in that sequence, the action you're supposed to perform has a high chance of not working. The biggest example of this is taking cover. Now, unlike the rest of the game's controls, the input for taking cover is pretty simple. Unconventional, but simple. You just run up to a wall and slap the analog stick to press up against it. The problem is, 9 times out of 10, it doesn't work, and even when it does, the horrible collision detection this game sports will get you killed anyway. Your character often just runs up to the wall, rather than sticking to it, often leaving you open to enemy fire. And speaking of enemy fire, you'll get it a lot. The enemies in this game have decent AI, but they are often crack shots, which is more than what can be said for the ally AI. These are by far the worst teammates you'll ever see in a video game. They pretty much do nothing but get shot, and when they aren't getting shot, they're either missing their targets or shooting you. Yes, it is just that bad where your friends kill you twice as much as the bad guys do. In actuality, you're better off just sending them to draw fire, as that's all they'll succeed at. Just make sure you're close to them, because they don't revive each other, and if they die, it's game over. The story doesn't do the game any favors, either. It's never particularly well written at any time, and what's worse is that it doesn't explain everything that it should. It also doesn't quite hold its own against several games that came before it, which is a total shame, but isn't totally unexpected. Strong plots and interesting stories have never really been a part of IOI's traits. But at least you'd think it has decent dialogue. Unfortunately, it fails there, too. First off, it's not cleverly-written, and it uses the F-word more than any single piece of media you'll ever find. There are very few sentences said in this game that don't have it. It was an obvious attempt to make the game seem grittier than it is, but all it did was just take away the drama and strong feeling that the word evokes. Most of all, it really just feels like they hired an angst-filled teenager to write out the dialogue. It's just that poor. However, the game has one good point: Its multiplayer concept. Fragile Alliance is a very well-thought out concept that follows the game's themes of trust and betrayal very well, in that the outcome of a match is entirely in the players' hands. You can stick to the plan and be a team player, or you can pull a Kane and leave everyone of your partners for dead. Unfortunately, the very same flaws that the Campaign mode has are carried over to this mode, save for the ally AI. You'll still have the same control problems, the same poor collision detection, and the same horrible aiming. It doesn't flat out ruin it, but it doesn't do anything good for it. All in all, this game could have been so many things, but achieves none of it, not even its main selling point: Its own story. The only way I can really recommend this game is if you have absolutely nothing else to play at all. It is a rental at best. Expand

See all 78 User Reviews

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