HamilTEN Gaming- Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days

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(I have a very large video project coming up, thought I should do some test stuff just to practice. This is part of that test)

HamilTEN Gaming: Kane and Lynch 2

This is the first of hopefully many installments of hamilTEN gaming, looking at some of the current gaming experiences you can have for under ten dollars. The games in this series will be played until we decide whether it’s worth buying and at what price. We will be taking a look at Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days, which was found in a Blockbuster liquidation for 8 dollars.

Kane and Lynch is a third person shooter with online/splitscreen cooperative campaign and a very interesting visual presentation. There are other multiplayer modes but on the Xbox 360 it seemed like other players were nonexistent.

In Kane and Lynch 2 you play as wife beater mullet guy or less interesting dress shirt guy. They swear a lot and are some type of criminals. The story is mostly a criminal on the run type of thing and involves as much generic gore and crude language as the developers can throw at it.

The story and characters are ignorable but the graphics definitely aren’t. Everything is a bit on the generic side but it is coated in tons of digital video filters that make the whole experience look like an episode of cops shot on a cellphone camera. Shockingly the gimmick works and adds a sense of urgency to the shouting and shooting.

The gameplay is a loose gears of war style third person shooter. Things feel imprecise but it seems with the perpetual forward motion that the affect was intended. There is really only one path through every encounter and the answer its always shoot and move forward. Some of the non-shooting mechanics such as reviving a fallen partner are not implemented well and can result in some unnecessary restarts.

For what the game is the sound is well done. Guns and other effects have a meaty and slightly too loud sound which fits the setting and embedded camera person style graphics. Voice acting is competent although the script leans heavily on the 7 words you don’t say on television. The music is random chaos broken up by a random generic 80’s sounding pop song.

Mainly purchased this game due to the price and my interest in the graphical style, both areas the game succeeds with everything else being competent. The competitive multiplayer modes look very interesting, but if no one is around to play them then its not a selling point. The game seems short, I played it for about 3 hours and it seems like I am at least halfway through the campaign.

If you are a fan of third person shooters, split screen coop, or visual gimmicks we recommend this game at the ten dollar price point. Thanks for budget gaming with us, we’ll be saving our pennies until we can tell you about some other bargains soon.