Kayne and Lynch 2 is a game by Square Enix released in 2009. This review has some spoilers.
This game is a Gears of War clone. You hide behind cover a lot and shoot guys. There's a small list of things that save this game from being totally derivative. The game's visual style is presented as though captured by a handheld video camera, similar to the movie Cloverfield or District 9. Often 'glitches' and 'artifacts' distort the picture. When you make your character run, the camera swings in an almost naueseating arc. The color saturation is always a smidgen “off”, and a slight visual noise vibrates over the picture. Personally I love this style. I loved it in Cloverfield, and I love it in this game as well. It gives the game a very gritty, candid edge, as if none of the combat was scripted and it was all caught of tape by a random guy who just happened to be there.
The game's setting is compelling as well, namely Shanghai China. The single player campaign takes you everywhere to a high class restaurant, to an electronics shop on the street, to apartments, to construction sites, to a business district, and an airport. I remember in the 90's I liked Duke Nukem 3D better than Doom, because Doom's levels just felt like random hallways with designs painted on the walls, but the stages in Duke 3D felt like real places, like a grocery store or a hotel. K&L2's levels appeal to me for the same reasons.
Because the levels in this game struck me as real places where people live and work rather than a 'level' contrived by a designer somewhere, the combat has a very stressful, bleak atmosphere. Some games make violence fun, running and gunning like Arnold in the movie “Commando.” K&L2 feels more like getting sucked into an ocean tide and fighting for air. It's often difficult to tell where enemies are coming from, and I seemed to run out of ammo a lot. It had some moments of “fun” violence, but other times it was very depressing.
For brainless entertainment K&L2 was OK, but there's too many other things I didn't like. Because modern games are trying to be less like Doom and Quake, which are just dungeons full of power ups and zombies, and instead trying to be like interactive movies with a plot arc, characters to root for, etc. it falls short at making me care about the characters motivations. At one point Lynch's girlfriend, Xiu, gets kidnapped, but I don't know a single personal detail about her and am somehow expected to believe Lynch would plunge back into the mouth of hell to try and rescue her. At least Quake didn't expect me to care about cardboard characters. There's one character that kind of offended me, namely a British arms dealer who makes sure to vocally say “bloody hell” a lot. When Lynch finally meets up with the Chinese kingpin responsible for killing his girl, there's no showdown, no unforeseen twist or deal they reach (like Inglorious Bastards, maybe), the kingpin just says, “Now, boys, let's negotiate.” then Lynch anticlimactically shoots him and grumblingly walks away. The ending entailed both men hijacking an airport to escape the country at a point when I didn't personally care whether they both got hit by trucks. Also, this is probably the first game I've played that had a pretty gruesome part I wouldn't have wanted anyone to see me play through, namely where Kayne and Lynch are stripped, tied to a couple chairs, and cut up repeatedly with a razor blade. A fairly awkward level follows where the fight naked through another 300 or so faceless bandits with guns. Yes, you heard me: naked gears of war.
This game brings some interesting things to the table with its setting and visual style, but it's also full of tasteless crap, so I can't wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone else. I managed to find my copy for $3. I wouldn't recommend paying much more than $10 for it.