This review contains spoilers
TL;DR: Story/character interactions are great, Gameplay is serviceable until the 3rd act which just becomes dreadful with half-baked ideas.
Feel a bit conflicted on this one. One hand its story is intriguing with starring an ex-merc named "Kane" and a schizo who go by "Lynch" who are complete fuckups going on a quest to pay back the debts of mercenaries called "The7", but everything goes to shit for em.
And im not playing that they're fuckups up either, as soon as the first prison breakout mission ends and the real events begin from the word "go". Botched heists, Botched deals, so many people distrust both of em for valid reasons.
Kane being a selfish dick whose implied to basically use and discard those he comes into contact with for his own personal needs, addicted to "making deals" and weaseling his way out of jams and Lynch for being a pathological liar with a severe case of mental illness and having blackouts to where he loses it and kills those in his sight in the process, including his own wife in his backstory and many civilians whom he sees as cops when you play as him in the co-op mode.
Despite them being massive fuckups by every sense of the word, i feel bad for both of them. Lynch due to his condition, constantly uttering to himself and violent impulses which led to him being in this mess ironically over watching kane, only for him to also be betrayed by the7. and Kane, despite being a traitor using and discarding everyone, having a troubled past when he was a former police officer, his son got a hold of his gun and discharged, causing his wife and daughter to leave him.
Only for spoilers, his wife and daughter getting kidnapped & dragged into his beef with the7. Not only his wife gets shot in the head due to his own fuck ups, but his own daughter, jenny, the only person he cares about left on this earth, RESENTING him. On top of him having disturbing moments play in his head, subconsciously beating himself over and feeling overwhelming guilt while you have near-death experiences during gameplay waiting for someone to revive you with adrenaline.
Just with little bits and pieces, and obvious inspiration from michael mann's work, mainly heat and collateral, and may have been considered an inspiration & often get compared to the likes of GTA V with both characters sounding awfully familiar with A former heister whose selfish and only make deals to go awry and a psychopath who has much resentment towards him, even having the same backstory of a botched heist gone wrong. Though with GTAV, that at least has a "3rd option" or a "Happy ending", with Kane & Lynch, There is no "good ending" here, You either get branded as a traitor by your own daughter for leaving your squad behind, or risk going back for your crew only for one of em to bite the dust and the other ditching you, lynch and jenny.
On the other hand, This is a third person shooter. and ive wrote multiple paragraphs about the story since thats the games saving grace alongside with perfect lighting and cinematography acting like a legit crime drama. ...For the first 2 acts. The third act is such a drastic shift in tone and even quality, that it fucks up any enjoyment i had towards this game and i thought "how bad can the havana levels be", IO interactive just said fuck it and tried their damndest to throw EVERYTHING at you, even on "Codeine" (Medium) difficulty.
A shit ton of soldiers surrounding you, including a few tanks and helis which are tedious to take out, gunplay pretty much taking the piss, shooting everywhere but your target, which i was willing to forgive up until this point (being early 7th gen) since you were facing criminals and cops and not a whole ass militia with M16s and LMGs, oh and half-assed attempts to implement both mechanics from the devs previous work,
Ai squads to back you up with a shit ton of solider fodder from Freedom Fighters (which this game was originally started out as a sequel to but thanks to rights issues, it got morphed into whatever this 3rd act is), and half-assed "stealth" sections and give your pistols and sniper suppressors which is baffling since a year prior, a little small game of theirs called Hitman: Blood Money came out and to go from that games stealth to this feels like a joke.
Wish they had kept the same amount of janky confidence they had with the first 2 acts with the 3rd act instead of basically throwing away a serviceable TPS with Ai giving you ammo when you run out and only have 2 revives with adrenaline until you die completely, a shoddy cover system where it randomly SNAPS onto random objects you duck behind and not having a contextual button like Gears of war and other TPS at the time, and gunplay that makes bullets go all over the place instead of your target, with a good ass story, to make this half-assed spiritual successor with a gimmick you can do without coming from a 2003 game they never got the rights back to. (until modern day when they split away from Square Enix to work on the nu-Hitman games and Now, an untitled James Bond project.)
The story and the first two acts really saved this game from being completely shat on, the bugs (including a game breaking one which at 120+fps a police car spawns, killing lynch and you cannot revive him since its a shooting segment, only fix is to limit it at 60fps), and the 3rd act really drags this from a fair 3 to 2 1/2.
Goes from serviceable to just straight up exhausting, its other saving grace that its short so you don't have to play the last levels for long, but at the same time, if you're planning to play this or replay it, enjoy the good bits because they do not last for long.
Feel a bit conflicted on this one. One hand its story is intriguing with starring an ex-merc named "Kane" and a schizo who go by "Lynch" who are complete fuckups going on a quest to pay back the debts of mercenaries called "The7", but everything goes to shit for em.
And im not playing that they're fuckups up either, as soon as the first prison breakout mission ends and the real events begin from the word "go". Botched heists, Botched deals, so many people distrust both of em for valid reasons.
Kane being a selfish dick whose implied to basically use and discard those he comes into contact with for his own personal needs, addicted to "making deals" and weaseling his way out of jams and Lynch for being a pathological liar with a severe case of mental illness and having blackouts to where he loses it and kills those in his sight in the process, including his own wife in his backstory and many civilians whom he sees as cops when you play as him in the co-op mode.
Despite them being massive fuckups by every sense of the word, i feel bad for both of them. Lynch due to his condition, constantly uttering to himself and violent impulses which led to him being in this mess ironically over watching kane, only for him to also be betrayed by the7. and Kane, despite being a traitor using and discarding everyone, having a troubled past when he was a former police officer, his son got a hold of his gun and discharged, causing his wife and daughter to leave him.
Only for spoilers, his wife and daughter getting kidnapped & dragged into his beef with the7. Not only his wife gets shot in the head due to his own fuck ups, but his own daughter, jenny, the only person he cares about left on this earth, RESENTING him. On top of him having disturbing moments play in his head, subconsciously beating himself over and feeling overwhelming guilt while you have near-death experiences during gameplay waiting for someone to revive you with adrenaline.
Just with little bits and pieces, and obvious inspiration from michael mann's work, mainly heat and collateral, and may have been considered an inspiration & often get compared to the likes of GTA V with both characters sounding awfully familiar with A former heister whose selfish and only make deals to go awry and a psychopath who has much resentment towards him, even having the same backstory of a botched heist gone wrong. Though with GTAV, that at least has a "3rd option" or a "Happy ending", with Kane & Lynch, There is no "good ending" here, You either get branded as a traitor by your own daughter for leaving your squad behind, or risk going back for your crew only for one of em to bite the dust and the other ditching you, lynch and jenny.
On the other hand, This is a third person shooter. and ive wrote multiple paragraphs about the story since thats the games saving grace alongside with perfect lighting and cinematography acting like a legit crime drama. ...For the first 2 acts. The third act is such a drastic shift in tone and even quality, that it fucks up any enjoyment i had towards this game and i thought "how bad can the havana levels be", IO interactive just said fuck it and tried their damndest to throw EVERYTHING at you, even on "Codeine" (Medium) difficulty.
A shit ton of soldiers surrounding you, including a few tanks and helis which are tedious to take out, gunplay pretty much taking the piss, shooting everywhere but your target, which i was willing to forgive up until this point (being early 7th gen) since you were facing criminals and cops and not a whole ass militia with M16s and LMGs, oh and half-assed attempts to implement both mechanics from the devs previous work,
Ai squads to back you up with a shit ton of solider fodder from Freedom Fighters (which this game was originally started out as a sequel to but thanks to rights issues, it got morphed into whatever this 3rd act is), and half-assed "stealth" sections and give your pistols and sniper suppressors which is baffling since a year prior, a little small game of theirs called Hitman: Blood Money came out and to go from that games stealth to this feels like a joke.
Wish they had kept the same amount of janky confidence they had with the first 2 acts with the 3rd act instead of basically throwing away a serviceable TPS with Ai giving you ammo when you run out and only have 2 revives with adrenaline until you die completely, a shoddy cover system where it randomly SNAPS onto random objects you duck behind and not having a contextual button like Gears of war and other TPS at the time, and gunplay that makes bullets go all over the place instead of your target, with a good ass story, to make this half-assed spiritual successor with a gimmick you can do without coming from a 2003 game they never got the rights back to. (until modern day when they split away from Square Enix to work on the nu-Hitman games and Now, an untitled James Bond project.)
The story and the first two acts really saved this game from being completely shat on, the bugs (including a game breaking one which at 120+fps a police car spawns, killing lynch and you cannot revive him since its a shooting segment, only fix is to limit it at 60fps), and the 3rd act really drags this from a fair 3 to 2 1/2.
Goes from serviceable to just straight up exhausting, its other saving grace that its short so you don't have to play the last levels for long, but at the same time, if you're planning to play this or replay it, enjoy the good bits because they do not last for long.