Top 10: Things that will make Kane & Lynch 2 great

I can’t remember a game causing as much controversy as Kane & Lynch where the issue wasn’t the obscene content. At no time was the game going to be banned and it was never cited as a training tool for murderers or anything of that sort, yet the game made headlines for weeks. More important to gamers was the quality of the game, which didn’t really live up to expectations. With Eidos all but confirming a sequel after the publisher announced sales of over one million units, we thought we’d put together VideoGamer.com’s Top 10: Things that will make Kane & Lynch 2 great.

10. No stupid boss battles.

Certain sections of Kane & lynch were, to put it mildly, damn annoying. Take the ridiculous scene in which a giant construction truck rolls in and you have to target the driver as it targets your puny head with its giant tyres. I can’t have been the only one who felt like giving up here and never loading the game up again, so insane difficulty spikes need to be completely removed from the sequel.

9. Better checkpoints.

There are few things more annoying than being forced to replay sections of a game over and over again, especially now that it’s more than possible to allow gamers to save whenever they feel like it. I’m not demanding that the sequel allows us to save anywhere, but at the very least the checkpoint system needs a thorough re-think and plenty of playtesting.

8. Fix or dump squad controls.

Squad control adds a great deal to games when it’s implemented well (GRAW, Vegas) but in Kane & Lynch the levels that relied on it failed miserably. In the sequel IO needs to either forget about it completely or fix the system. Even once you got over the original game’s many flaws, the squad control system would repeatedly punch you in the face, almost egging you on to quit and never return.

7. More movie-like.

Everyone wanted Kane & Lynch to be the Heat of the video game world. All the trailers made it look like we’d be getting a heavily Michael Mann influenced experience, but what we got was more Guy Ritchie. Kane & Lynch is certainly one of the better attempts to mimic movies in video game form, but there’s still a huge amount of room for improvement.

6. Tone down the crudeness.

It’s one thing for a game to be edgy, but Kane & Lynch frequently crossed over into crude territory. I don’t think there’s ever been a game with as much swearing as there is in IO’s third-person shooter. At first it was just a little jarring, but over time it started to grate and it’s really not needed. As games are trying to become more and more mature, overusing bad language undermines any good work that’s been done.

5. Online co-op.

One of Kane & Lynch’s best features was the two-player co-op where one player played as Kane and the other as Lynch. The cool part is that Lynch hallucinates, causing the second player to see a drastically different version of events, such as civilians as enemies. Sadly, the game only allowed for co-op via split-screen on a single console. With half a screen each, the already awkward camera became even more of a problem, so online co-op in the sequel is a must.

4. Proper AI please.

Something we often take for granted these days is intelligent and natural behaving team-mates and enemies. Kane & Lynch had neither. Team-mates often ran into the open for no good reason and enemies showed little to no effort to stay alive. With some intelligent enemies the already excellent shoot-outs in Kane & Lynch could have been incredible, so the sequel has no excuse but to deliver.

3. A proper next-gen engine.

Kane and Lynch had a stylish look, but it’s clear that the game engine isn’t really up to par with the best on offer these days. IO Interactive’s trademark mannequin-esque characters made an appearance and detail in the environments just wasn’t what gamers expect from a next-gen action game. Parts, such as the awesome looking club scene, showed just what is possible, but we want that kind of polish throughout the sequel.

2. Sort out the aiming.

For a third-person shooter the aiming was terrible. Even if you upped the sensitivity Kane couldn’t target enemies quickly enough. Combined with the rather loose camera, getting used to how the game played took far too long. While this control scheme worked in the Hitman series of games, in Kane & Lynch there are far more enemies and the need for speed and precision is far greater.

1. A working cover system.

Of all the things that hurt the first game, the awkward cover system is right at the top of the list. Instead of simply walking into a wall can we have a proper system in the sequel please? Games like Gears of War and Rainbow Six Vegas both handle this extremely well, so IO has no excuse not to deliver. For a game with such intense shoot-outs it really is an essential part of the control system.