Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days - Review

Source
Skipping the first part, because it doesn't even launch on Windows 10, I first interacted with this game back on March 28, when I saw it at a wonderful $0.99 sale, which is actually available now on Steam until 7th July.

Story (contains spoilers)

Source
The game begins with Kane visiting Lynch in Shanghai after years they have lived separated. After picking him up from the airport, Lynch has a little errand to complete before heading for the apartment. Here, something goes out wrong, and they manage to kill the daughter of a mafia boss in a random gunfight. From this point, hell breaks loose, and their only options is to leave the city while being hunted by mafia and police.

Characters

We can't really get the essence of the game without seeing who the main characters are. Not because they have whatever backstory that goes back years until it gets to a certain point that changed their lives, no, this is not that kind of story. This one is as gruesome as it can be, this duo is something that can only be described as the last persons that you want to encounter, day, night, doesn't matter, you would cross the street when you saw them.
Even through you get to emphasize a little with them, being the playable characters, just thinking what got them into this mess, and who they are actually are, makes you think maybe they deserve to have this fate.

Lynch

Well, Lynch is a psychopath, self-medicated, straight down psychopath, carrying only about him, his girlfriend, Kane, and his pocket. In the last screenshot, he is interrogating his enemy by pressing his face against a hot stove, and spoiler, shots him just after he gets all the information.

The whole plot is started by his greed that got him into more shady deals selling guns on the black market, and going head on into some extremely dangerous places, having random episodes of narcolepsy from his own medication, slaughtering through waves of enemies without having the smallest feeling of remorse, just asking who was the last person he killed, not because he carried, but how important that person was, an indicator of who will come after him. He encounters the consequences of his action with blood and violence.

Kane

Source
A disillusioned and desperate ex-mercenary, Kane is the more "stable" character from the duo. Although he's not self-medicated, he's far from being stable mentally, but, in his case, is somewhat understandable, considering the amount of violence and distress he's being put into, when he actually came to holiday to spend time with Lynch.

Kane's mental stability is slowly decaying during the story, making you wonder where is pulling his power of will to continue going through the narrow streets of Shanghai, just hoping to get the first way out of the city, so he can put the entire story behind.

Gameplay

The game is played from a 3rd person perspective, using covers to shot from, that sometimes are useless… Here I'm talking about the extreme difficulty, where enemies know how to flank you, shooting from different angles, making your life harder.

On the other side, the easy difficulty is making the corner usage optional most of the time, because you don't feel the damage so much. If you go on the extreme difficulty on the first play, going achievement hunting on easy is just a walk in the park.

You have a lot of weapons, but you actually start with a pistol and have to obtain them by collecting from your dead enemies. And sometimes this is annoying, having a weaker weapon against a stronger enemy, but it's part of the game.

Also, don't bother to make stealth kills, it just doesn't work. Everybody is instantly alerted, even if you use a silencer.

Arcade and Multiplayer

The game has both, this being also something does annoy me, half of the achievements are related to ranked multiplayer, but that one is dead and buried.

The arcade mode puts you with another players, bots at the moment, where you have to do different heists, and escape the area.

Source

The interesting part is that, everyone can betray anyone, making the player decide whenever he runs away with the other thieves, splitting the money, or try to kill its allies and secure the whole pot.

Atmosphere

This game has his own category, and is not for everybody. The realism of violence is impressive and brutal at the same time. The streets of Shanghai are presented in a distressing manner, the only way going through them is fully armed, and even then, the feeling doesn't fully disappear.

An effect of censoring is leaving the player mind to go wild, to think what he has done is just too horrible to appear on the camera. Oh yeah, the entire game is presented like a cameraman follows the characters around the entire story, it even has some specific movements, that you can actually deactivate from settings if it affects your gamplay.

But, this is not even over, the peak of ugliness in this game is the torture scene. The Chinese torture by a thousand cuts is exposed in its whole grittiness, our characters being fully naked and tortured to extract the information, and this goes even further, spoiler - Lynch's girlfriend is raped and killed in front of them. spoiler over.

While progressing through the story, the feeling of desperation is stronger and stronger, completed by Lynch narcolepsy and Kane mental breakdowns, forcing you to hope for the characters to make a successful escape, while still being unsure if they will manage to make it.

Final impression

Kane & Lynch is a violent game, with a gritty and desperate atmosphere, that is simply not for everybody. Some scenes are just brutal, unfiltered violence, making this game stay in his own category, ugly games.

Info

Images without a source were captured during gameplay.

Cool guys on Hive: @vladalexan, @enjar, @andvoinoiu

Cheers,
@cm0isa