Most of Kane & Lynch 2 reviews start talking about how it's ugly, janky and nauseating amongst other stuff, and all of this is factually true. But unlike what these claims might make you think, I actually love the game the way it is. The gruesome opening sets the tone for the rest of the game: it's not going to be a fun time. Frauds like Neil Druckmann will tell you that their games are not meant to be fun, but then, intentionally or accidentally, end up making the most satisfying combat system, making all the brutality lose all its meaning. But Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is actually not a fun game.

The covers in other games like Uncharted, Gears of War and so on, turn you invincible in subtle ways hard to notice so you can stay as long in the cover as you want. Here covers rarely protect the player and it can get shot even behind the safest-looking cover, so you need to be looking at every angle enemies might show up, considering every position they can be in and choosing the correct covers to go to on the fly while being fast enough to not get killed in the way, all of this with the minimal time possible to think. There's no breathing time during the whole game, every moment in the game is a constant gunfight. Whether it be with gangsters, the police, Chinese SWAT forces or even the military. The game never explicitly tells who you are fighting and goes from one faction to another seamlessly, so on a first playthrough it might be hard to tell who you're shooting at. This culminates in the on-rails chopper gunner level where the constant shooting, the blood splatters on the camera, the visual and sonorous noise and the loud shots and screams make it hard to even know what's going on. It's non-stop chaos and confusion. In fact, I've read that the devs were inspired by movies like Heat, and the whole game feels like that one shootout scene from Heat during its three to four hours runtime. There's barely any soundtrack, and it's so integrated in the ambience that one might think there isn't any at all, so everything there is to hear are gunshots, bullet ricochets, car alarms beeping, explosions, glass shattering, shouting and anything in-between.

The most notable element, which is also the most criticized element, is the camera. It bumbles constantly and is really nauseating for a lot of people. While it can be really uncomfortable, it gives the game a unique aesthetic and is more in line with being a not fun game. Everything in the game gives the idea that it is being recorded, details like image corruption and pixel blurs for close range headshot make the game start feeling less like an standard third person shooter and more like a playable version of LiveLeak. Kane & Lynch 2 not only is unpleasant to play, but also has an equally unpleasant and anticlimactic story. These two guys go from bad to worse to even worse during the whole game and all the levels on the second half always end in the most unsatisfactory way possible, highlighting the infamous ending, which ends really fast and abruptly. But it doesn't feel like it ends early, it just ends when there's nothing left to tell, at the correct moment.

The fact that there are unarmed civilians at every corner is especially unsettling when you notice that the game doesn't draw any attention to this. You can just shoot someone in the head and nobody will give a crap. On the second level you get ambushed in the middle of the highway and all the cars on the street have civilians inside and even they can die. But does this actually mean anything or it's just cheap edgy shock value? This game has a plot and characters so archetypical yet everything is extremely unappealing, from the gameplay to the cutscenes, that this feels like a really elaborate dark satire on third person shooters at the time. It features all the clichés of its genre, but it weaponises everything against the player. It even has an on-rails chopper gunner sequence and a helicopter bossfight! This is just any other third person cover shooter, but this one has the guts to be a more brave and authentic experience than most of its contemporaries. Or maybe not, maybe I'm confusing incompetence for bravery, maybe the unforgiving cover system and dogshit aiming are the signs of a rushed development, but I want to believe this was a genuine creative effort from a team with a clear vision of what they wanted to make. But if this isn't the case, I liked the experience anyways, and if someone asked me for a good "bad" game, this would be my answer.