YouGamers.com

Reviews

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men

A view to a kill

Kane & Lynch looks a lot like an Xbox 360 title. The tell-tale signs of limited available memory - a distinct lack of variety in models and textures - are there, but the game compensates with flashy shader and particle effects. Another feature carried over from cross-platform development is great multicore support: when tested with a quad-core processor, all four cores are significantly loaded during gameplay, and they follow the same load pattern, suggesting that the game's rendering engine is threaded. As a result, any modern dual-core processor will run the game perfectly, and the video card becomes the only bottleneck.

There's some evidence of a rushed launch in the game's visuals - particularly animations, or lack thereof. Although you can see all armed characters reloading their weapons, weapon switching between your main weapon and backup pistol isn't animated - the pistol just appears in your hand, and your rifle, for example, on your back. Similarly, if you shoot a policeman who's sitting in his cruiser but scripted to come out later, he'll plop outside without opening the car door and fall dead to the pavement. Running into bugs like these takes a lot out of what's meant to be a photorealistic firefight.

Kane & Lynch uses bloom lighting sparingly but to good effect

Rappelling down a Tokyo skyscraper. Depth of field is used beautifully to create a sense of distance

The art direction and level design of Kane & Lynch, on the other hand, is superb. From the streets of L.A. to a bank vault, dark construction site, prison, crowded night club, the streets and skyscrapers of Tokyo, a battle-scarred Havana and the jungles of South America, each location is fresh and different. There's even a great, short subway sequence that doesn't involve any tunnel tramping at all! Only one location, the nightclub, is recycled, but even that's done on purpose: if you were careless about bystanders' safety on the first go, you'll get to see the results on the second.

In true console style, the main characters are highly detailed while the environments are fairly bare. Kane isn't a spring chick anymore

Shader effects are used to distort Kane's screen at moments of extreme stress

YouGamers recommendations

Great art design, combined with the performance limitations imposed by console platforms, result in a PC version with simple but effective, good looking visuals achieved with fairly modest hardware requirements. The only thing that jumps out is the large amount of system RAM recommended by the publisher - 2 GB is still rare to see as a recommendation, although many games benefit from the added RAM in shorter loading times. With a reasonable system, the game's a smooth experience, and levels are ready to run long before the spoken loading dialogue has finished. Games for Windows Live is the only part of the game that makes you wait, with surprisingly slow updates and profile downloads.

Minimum graphics settings, good performance with the publisher's minimum system. Shadows and most post-processing effects are disabled

Medium detail, with reflections disabled and hard-edged shadows. Good performance with the publisher's recommended settings

High settings, good performance with the YouGamers minimum system at 1024x768 or 1280x720 resolution. Improved texture detail and shadow quality, and light reflections for a more realistic rendering of the scene

Maximum settings: adding 4x anti-aliasing or increasing resolution smooths out the jaggies and makes the PC version look much better than Kane & Lynch on consoles. Good performance on the YouGamers recommended system

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: Single Player CampaignPage 3: Multiplayer: CO-OP and OnlinePage 4: Graphics and TechPage 5: Conclusion and Final Scores

Related Stuff

Tags