Kane and Lynch is one of those games that you so look forward to only to be utterly disappointed once you actually get to play it. Such potential wasted. The co-op campaign is a joke - don't buy this if you want to play on a LAN because you can't - it's a split screen affair and one player MUST play with the official Xbox controller for PC. Who puts a split screen co-op on a PC game?!

The game is also buggy as Hell. If you end up being one of the unlucky people whose frame rate drops every other second, making the game virtually unplayable, you'll have to go into your device manager and disable all your HIDs. This fix worked for me but it doesn't work for everyone so be warned, you may end up not being able to play the game at all. And there's not even a patch for it.

Even after that, my sound is always screwing up. It goes loud, it goes quiet, it goes choppy, it goes staticcy, it goes completely then returns without warning. Awful. Haven't found a fix for this… more »

Kane and Lynch is one of those games that you so look forward to only to be utterly disappointed once you actually get to play it. Such potential wasted. The co-op campaign is a joke - don't buy this if you want to play on a LAN because you can't - it's a split screen affair and one player MUST play with the official Xbox controller for PC. Who puts a split screen co-op on a PC game?!

The game is also buggy as Hell. If you end up being one of the unlucky people whose frame rate drops every other second, making the game virtually unplayable, you'll have to go into your device manager and disable all your HIDs. This fix worked for me but it doesn't work for everyone so be warned, you may end up not being able to play the game at all. And there's not even a patch for it.

Even after that, my sound is always screwing up. It goes loud, it goes quiet, it goes choppy, it goes staticcy, it goes completely then returns without warning. Awful. Haven't found a fix for this yet.

I haven't played the game all the way through but a look at the forums suggests that you'll be lucky if the game doesn't crash on you. A lot. It hasn't happened to me yet but that doesn't mean it won't.

The game itself is actually pretty good though. It's no Gears of War but it's good enough to be worth playing if you can get past all the bugs. The script is good, the voice acting is decent and the story is straigh out of Hollywood. It often really does feel like you're playing in a movie, which is what the makers were after. Enemy AI sucks - the cops just stand there firing blindly at you while you shoot them in the head, they don't appear to make any real attempt to take decent cover or get away from you. It makes for a pretty easy ride, which is a bad thing (who buys a game for the LACK of challenge it presents?) but it does make for some good sequences where you, as Kane (or Lynch if you bother with co-op) take cover behind a wall or whatever then peek out to off three or four guys with headshots in quick succession (something virtually impossible in the console versions by the way because the joypad as a precision aiming device is, well, rubbish).

Having said that, sometimes you can shoot a guy several times in the head and he just keeps coming. The effect of your bullets sometimes feels pretty arbitrary and can take away from the feeling of achievement when it does come off.

I don't find the cover systemt particularly bad, though i do know lots of people do. If you handle it right, it works a treat. I have read though that some people find it hard to use, specifically getting stuck behind scenerly when they don't want to take cover - because cover is context sensitive, it's automatic, if you're near cover you take cover, there's no button to press.

One control issue I had was with the inventory - I had to change the key because the default if mouse button 3 and I don't have a mouse button 3! I shifted it to 'I' though and it's fine.

A pretty average game overall and well worth playing through but I can't give it more than two stars because the execution of the PC verion is lazy and shoddy and full of bugs and programming deficiencies. For £7.99 though, you could do a lot worse!

First of all, I had to search the net for a solution to a terrible jerkyness that had the game hiccup every second or so. Found it was related to my Logitech keyboard and mouse, and fixed it by disabling the HID devices, while retaining the basic ones. Known issue, no official patch, not even publicly acknowledged by Eidos.
Another shortcoming: language. I chose English but the game decided I had to play in Italian. Sure, that's my language, but if you want to force me to play in my native language (the game definitely HAD English too, as it was purchased @Play.com) why give me a language selection screen at all? Besides, it sounds like they gave ALL italian voices to a single actor, who tries his best changing the tone, but still can't make Kane sound different from Lynch or anyone else.
When I started playing it, it soon confirmed the bad feeling these two issues had created. I liked the first part of the story, the attitude of the two lead characters, the environments… more »

First of all, I had to search the net for a solution to a terrible jerkyness that had the game hiccup every second or so. Found it was related to my Logitech keyboard and mouse, and fixed it by disabling the HID devices, while retaining the basic ones. Known issue, no official patch, not even publicly acknowledged by Eidos.
Another shortcoming: language. I chose English but the game decided I had to play in Italian. Sure, that's my language, but if you want to force me to play in my native language (the game definitely HAD English too, as it was purchased @Play.com) why give me a language selection screen at all? Besides, it sounds like they gave ALL italian voices to a single actor, who tries his best changing the tone, but still can't make Kane sound different from Lynch or anyone else.
When I started playing it, it soon confirmed the bad feeling these two issues had created. I liked the first part of the story, the attitude of the two lead characters, the environments you move in. But they can't make up for the missing action. Enemies are dumb as bricks, and will often just stand there and get shot. The only challenge comes from pre-positioned enemies in a few very well defended locations, but even this feels cheesy. This is nothing like the great enemy AI in FEAR, or in a gazillion other games nowadays.
Your allies are not quite as bad, and can sometimes be useful if you position them with great care. The main characters, that is: when you have some unnamed grunts with you, they all go down in a split second.
The story itself takes a dive soon. I can no longer see anything original in the second half of the game, but maybe it's just me being unable to see it because of the terrible gameplay making me bitter.
Graphics are not particularly good either, but I could accept average looks if the substance were there. It isn't.
Maybe the thing I liked best is the theme playing in the main menu. That should tell a lot about the quality of this game.