2.5/5 ★ – vr_'s review of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.

Pretty mid with some relatively garbage gunplay, however short enough and fun enough to keep my interest for its 5 hour runtime. During its various missions, both gameplay wise and narratively, Kane and Lynch felt extremely reminiscent to many games I had played, specifically Max Payne 3, Mafia II, Payday, Call of Duty Black Ops, MGS Peace Walker and A Way Out. While these games are significantly better than Kane and Lynch, it is interesting that Kane and Lynch pre-dates all of them. This made the game feel worth playing as I viewed it as a sort of “prototype” of games to come, rather than a cohesive gameplay or narrative experience. The plot hardly made sense as missions jarringly shifted tones. The game starts with you escaping cops and ends with you in Cuba fighting a civil war, with little in between these two set-pieces bridging the gap in any comprehensive or logical way. It really felt like IO wanted to make 6 different games and said screw it and shoved them all into 1 package, resulting in each section feeling underbaked. The biggest issue is the shooting, as it never quite felt right. Unless you were hitting headshots, sometimes enemies would seemingly take no damage even though you are hitting them. The environments are probably the best aspect of the game as they are quite diverse, and the short mission structure prevents any area from becoming stale. I definitely think the first half of this game is significantly more enjoyable than the latter half however. ⅖ but probably better than 50% (not enough to be ⅗)