So videogame trash sells in spite of bad reviews. Certainly not news to anyone, but it makes the actions taken by Gamespot management and the implied actions of the publisher, in regards to Gerstmanngate, seem particularly ignominious.

Did an example really need to be made of a high profile editor in service of a game that seemed destined to sell a million copies in spite of any bad reviews? To be fair, the publisher probably was fairly nervous about sales given the initial reviews, but in retrospect, and hindsight is 20/20, all this comes off as a very public "F*** You!" to the enthusiast press more than anything else.

Still haven't even played the game..

Don't

Is it really that bad? A gaming magazine I subscribe to had an article written by someone who has always been on the same page as I was when it came to giving games a grade. He gave this game a 70, but spent one of two pages cursing about a level with a truck.

When they announced this game and showed the first few trailers, I was pretty excited.

X nosgoth X:
When they announced this game and showed the first few trailers, I was pretty excited.

That's the point. Everyone was hyped up about it, but most people have rated it as a mediocre game.

Also, lol at the thread title.

Played it and disliked it... to the point that a Jew dislikes the national socialist party.

The gameplay was crap. A few good ideas but the story also sucked. You kill at least a bajillion cops... then you go to war in some 3rd world country with god knows who.

X nosgoth X:
Still haven't even played the game..

same here but i think im going to get a demo to see my self or wait untill my one of my friends gets it.

i'm not going to buy it out of pure spite. i know i'm a dick

Played it, enjoyed it. It's certainly a flawed game, but I think it deserves to sell (though many other titles deserved it more and didn't). The Eurogamer review is excellent and is pretty much how I experienced the game, with the difference that the gameplay is a bit better on the PC version.

Perhaps videogames are starting to develop beyond the pretty boy hero aesthetic. That's what future games should take from Kane & Lynch, the hero doesn't have to look like a Calvin Klein model. The characters are ugly and old and the story is harsh and thankless, in a wonderful way. The game doesn't let you be the good guy, or even a bad ass killer. However you play the game, the main character comes off as a sad over-the-hill criminal who has wasted everything that was good in his life and gotten a whole lot of people killed.

I found the game incredibly fun. Also, don't base your decisions entirely off of game reviews. The game is REALLY fun (at least on PC, I have no clue if it sucks on console), and I only have a few qualms about it. Basically, you'll probably end up "dying" quite a few times... but that's ok, because as long as you didn't "die" within the last minute, you can come back to life, much like in Gears of War (where you can encourage Dom to keep fighting), but here, it works both ways (an ally comes up and injects some awesome adrenaline in your system). In fact, this game does feel like it stole a few ideas from Gears of War. Kane (the person you play) is off to the left of the camera instead of dead center like most games, you have no health meter and judge your health off of how red the screen is (and how tilted the camera is, which is a neat effect, I must say), the fact that you recover quickly from your bullet-catching, and, once again, you can revive 'dead' teammates.

Anyway, back to the dying. There are a few spots in the game that are pretty tricky and require several tries to get it right (you can also fail missions and, if you either get blown to bits or OD on adrenaline (by dying twice in about a two-minute time frame), you can die. For real, this time.), but what game DOESN'T have this? However, the only three levels I've seen so far (which sadly is just about once every three chapters) that have this irritating habit are: The nightclub (you have to defend your buddy from guards, since he is carrying a load and can't defend himself. The trick is to make him stay put until you clear the area.), the behemoth truck (yeah, that part was VASTLY annoying... but hey, the shovel-based murder before was REALLY cool, at least in my book. :D), and, well, where I'm stuck now. I just got to... that place in the middle of the war. Also... that was kind of a weird plot twist that didn't make too much sense, at least not yet (if you couldn't already tell by "I'm stuck here", well, I'm stuck there and haven't finished the game).

Anyway, so far, co-op (on PC) sucks, since you have to have two 360 controllers in order to play it (which is amusing, since they don't let you use a 360 controller in single player mode). I haven't gotten the chance to play it since I don't have a second controller attached to my computer, let alone in my posession. Also, multiplayer seems a bit shallow, since A) the game is Live-based and therefore, you can only play against other PC-ers that don't want to upgrade to Gold (hey, why would you? PC gets free online play, whereas 360 doesn't! HAH!), and B) there's only one game mode. Sure, the game mode seems pretty fun, but when you burn out on that, you can't just set the next round to be a deathmatch. Also, I haven't played multiplayer, but I get the feeling that there won't be too many levels... and also, since the purpose of the game mode is to participate in a heist with everyone else playing (you can turn on each other though... it gets a little complicated on how you win), you and I can both guess that the game will get a little repetitive in multiplayer (MULTIPLAYER = REPETITIVE?? WTF?).

Finally... there are slight control issues. SLIGHT control issues. I miss Gears, where you could hit the spacebar to hit cover (oh yeah, you sprint with the spacebar in Kane and Lynch, too. Which... is how you 'sprint' in Gears.), since here, you have to walk up to cover and kind of stare at it while you hit some complicated key combination to HOPE you snap to the cover and don't slash your buddy open with the melee button instead.

But... all this aside.

The game is pretty good fun.

If you seriously trust the reviews, go and rent the game. Or borrow it. Who cares? It's a really fun game. It has a nice amount of story, but it doesn't force it out on you. The most story you get if you aren't paying attention is "I don't like these assholes. They are assholes. They did bad things, right in front of me, too. Let's kill them." The game has stunning graphics, decent gameplay, and stellar story. It feels like watching a heist-gone-wrong movie (since that's basically what the game is), but you get to blow things up your own goddamn way.

I did have an inkling to get it, purely more for multiplayer purposes.

And you do realise "Much ado about nothing" means "Much ado about sex"?

J-Val:
I did have an inkling to get it, purely more for multiplayer purposes.

And you do realise "Much ado about nothing" means "Much ado about sex"?

Really? Wow we learnt this play in school, gota love shakespear. I'm interested in K&L because its trying something new and if it encourages other games to be original then so more the better.

if measured to the hype ratio it was a bad game but if it didnt get all that hype it would have been a gud game

I got K&L on release and it is, IMHO, a heap of shit. Maybe not the worst game I've ever played, but an excellent example of just how bad an AAA title can be.

The fact that it's sold a million copies says more about the irrelevance of the gaming press when put up against the marketing onslaught that AAA games receive than it does about the quality of the game. The vast majority of the people out there buying games are not hardcore gamers. They're not reading indie (or even credible) reviews. They're not following the Gerstmann story. All they know is that they're watching the teevee and seeing ads for the Next New Thing, and that the ads make K&L look pretty cool. So, a whole bunch of ignorant suckers pick up the game next time they're at the game store.

Well, who is to blame? You cannot learn a games' quality from screenshots. You cannot learn a games' quality from watching somebody play. You can only learn it, truly taking some time and playing yourself...

So that was basically a marketing success... for whatever reason. I did not notice the game as I am not that much into all this violence stuff. And was there anything besides? Did I miss something? ;)

I've been fortunately one of the intelligent group that plays a demo before buying a hyped game, and thank god I invested that money into The Orange Box for my PS3.

On the demo game, you play a basic level. Thats it. Your asking "wtf nub, ur 2 n000by 4z ma likingz cus der mus b somfink gd about dis fing." But yeah, thats it. Nothing There is nothing special that would want me to buy a game in this demo. It was a mediocre experiance and another title added to the list of "Poor PS3 Game's".

Plus, how does adrenaline revive you when you take a bullet to the head?

jaisimar_chelsea:
if measured to the hype ratio it was a bad game but if it didnt get all that hype it would have been a gud game

Hype makes no bearing on wether a game is good or not. It makes a difference in how disappointed you are in the game if its over hyped, nothing else.

Well, you intelligently missed out on the game!

Not that I blame you for buying The Orange Box instead, it's a better purchase.

I can't understand how the characters not being likeable makes this a bad game. Raskolnikov isn't a likeable character either, but that doesn't make Crime and Punishment a terrible novel.

I haven't played the game yet, but I'll reiterate my belief that this game might not actually be that crap. I played the demo, and while it wasn't a sublime, gaming orgasm, it wasn't half bad... average and forgettable, but certainly not a terrible game.

I'm going to rent this and see how good it actually is: I imagine I might get bored before the end and not complete it, but I think there's still some fun to be had in the game. But, at the end of the day, there are so many great games out these days that its easy to deride and ignore the game completely. Which is fine also, but I just like to try everything.

I'm surprised to be defending the game, actually. When I first saw the hype videos and pre-release banter, I saw right through the whole thing and knew that this was just going to be an average game. But average isn't the same as 'terrible'.

My point in bringing up this topic wasn't so much to trash Kane and Lynch, but to point out that Gertsmann being fired over it now seems even more frivilous given that the game has done so well.

I find most people say it's bad without even playing on it. I enjoy Kane & Lynch. The story of the game is better than most games on the 360 (Mass Effect, Bioshock and Assassins Creed being some of the few that can compete with it).
The story doesn't stick to the same lines that most others seem to stick to. The fact that you can either get a bad ending or a... well a bad ending.

Yes, the gameplay could be improved. But no game is perfect. And i'm a big story fan in games.

Grandboy : Why does adrenaline revive you? Well, i'm gonna take a wild stab here. It's a game.
Little things like that need to be excused and not nit-picked by pretencious people like yourself. The fact of the matter is, every single game on the market has some stupid method of reviving or keeping somebody alive. Mainly because if a game became 100% realistic, it would be about as fun as anal intrusion with a donkeys cock.

New feature in games: realistic healing.

You get shot by a terrorist. You have to first call an ambulance, then wait twenty minutes for it to come. Apply pressure on the wound by pushing down the right thumbstick. Get into the ambulance, and get driven to the hospital. All in real-time, of course. The screen blacks out for 10 hours as the operation to save your life begins.

Tragedy; the bullet hit your spine: you're going to survive, but you'll be wheelchair bound for the rest of the game. 12 months of hard drinking pass by (all in real-time, of course) and your life slowly fades into depression.

Cheryl, the love of your life, leaves you, and takes the dog with her. You go to the closet and pick up your magnum: the last gun to touch your hands. You shoot yourself in the face. Game over. And you actually die.

Doesn't sound like much fun, really.

halbarad:
I find most people say it's bad without even playing on it. I enjoy Kane & Lynch. The story of the game is better than most games on the 360 (Mass Effect, Bioshock and Assassins Creed being some of the few that can compete with it).

I think you mean "surpass" rather than "compete". Mass Effect makes Kane & L's story look like the script to a Schwarzenegger film, and Assassin's Creed rather-distracting-but-original Sci-Fi touch also trounces it. And then of course, not even Mass Effect can (probably) touch BioShock when it comes to story.
TO be honest, I find K & L's story very bland and unoriginal, so I really don't understand why people praise it. It seems that the requirements to have a "well developed" story nowadays are to actually contain dialogue.
"Mysterious crime Brotherhood! Revenge! Guns!"

Yes, the gameplay could be improved. But no game is perfect. And i'm a big story fan in games.

No game may be perfect, but K & L is anything but. It's rather gritty-yet-not-gritty story definetely doesn't excuse the mediocre gameplay.

Grandboy : Why does adrenaline revive you? Well, i'm gonna take a wild stab here. But IT'S A GAME.
Little things like that need to be excused and not nit-picked by pretencious people like yourself.

Then why not a Med-Kit, or something more plausible? Adrenaline doesn't heal wounds.
And a game, just like any other medium, does get nit-picked. It's the small things that produce a believable atmosphere.

Med-Kits are exactly as plausible as adrenaline: not at all.

Have you played the game through? It's not about what you seem to think it's about.

This argument about whether or not K&L is any good highlights one of the biggest pitfalls in critical journalism. Just because something is objectively bad doesn't mean people won't enjoy it (hello, Chuck and Larry). If you look at it objectively, with a critical eye towards both the "art" (by which I mean story, presentation, gameplay) and the tech (in this case, graphics, consistency of behavior, etc), then K&L is awful. Even if the "plot" is kind of original, the presentation and the writing behind it is very poor.

An involving story should have at least one character that the player/reader/watcher can be sympathetic to, even if he's a complete tool. Look at Tony Soprano. He's a murderer, liar, thief and adulterer. Somehow, though, we like him. Kane and Lynch? By the time I was done with it, I was hoping that they would both die in the end.

From a tech standpoint, K&L is crap too, especially in the context of what is currently state of the art. The framerate is awful. The environment is blocky. The controls are squishy and poorly arranged. I had to retrain myself to be able to play it as it just ignores shooter conventions in it's control scheme. Frankly, the engine looks really dated.

There's a big difference between "I hate it" and "it's bad" and there's also a difference between "I like it" and "it's good". Objectively speaking, Godzilla movies and the new Bionic Woman TV show are bad (I think miss summers actually got cancelled), but I enjoy the heck out of both of them. And "War and Peace" might be a great novel, but I won't be reading it.

So, to those of you who like K&L: good for you. With a million copies sold, I hope somebody who dropped that $60 on it is having fun. That means that it wasn't a complete and total waste. But don't kid yourselves, it's not good.

I didn't enjoy Kane & Lynch in some mindless way like I might Chuch and Larry (probably not though), I enjoyed it because it tries to further the art form and dares to be different. It has more worth, in my opinion, than celebrated titles like Gears of War, even if the gameplay is not quite as polished. I resent the suggestion that I lack objectivity if I can recognize the good qualities of the game rather than just thrashing it.

I think people still bought it because of the hype and the fact that it's advertised everywhere (possibly because the producers KNOW its a poorly made game), and they maybe couldnt believe the reviews, who knows in the end.

I played it properly for the first time, on an Xbox Elite through a 32 inch HD TV and my initial impressions were "how old is this game really?", it did look a few years old, the graphics weren't as good as they maybe should or could have been.

Playing it further and it also seemed the controls were oddly placed and maybe awkward. Struggling to get used to the controls, the actual movement and fluidity of the character you control was very rigid and stiff, it was hard to even aim at people.

I guess after a few levels of this you get sick of it, because it's so irritating.

Having said all this, the story did seem quite a worthwhile one, and had the rest of the game lived up to its hype, or maybe just been better at all, it wouldn't suffer.

I've heard there's going to be a trilogy despite the poor result of this first game, well I can only hope the next game is not "half-arsed"

Lemur- I have a hard time buying your "this game is objectively bad" argument. Sure, I wasn't as floored by the graphics as I was by Gears of War or Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, but the night club scene was pretty impressive. And the setpiece where you rappel into the building to kill the fellow with the briefcase and then have to escape was a well-designed, memorable level. As for your problems with the dialog and story, I enjoyed the Michael Mann vibe. It's a matter of taste.
This is an *average* game by all accounts. It's got some graphical flaws and gameplay issues. It's not the best game of the year, but it's worth checking out for what it does right. Just chill with your verdicts from on high about what is "objectively good or bad."

m_jim: I will "chill" when game companies stop producing crap and telling us how awesome it is. Honestly, I didn't have a big problem with the actual graphics. They looked OK. The problem is that a game with just "OK" graphics should have a solid and consistent framerate. K&L does not. The graphic engine for the game is poorly tuned and that fact is horribly apparent from the beginning escape scene. That is bad. A (supposedly) state of the art game on a state of the art console should not have framerate issues *and* merely "ok" graphics.

My issue with the story is not the Michael Mann vibe. Mr. Mann produces excellent movies with excellent scripts and decent cinematography. My issue with the story is that the writing is gawdawful. It could have been churned out by any first year english student without a thesaurus because just about half of the dialog is the F-word. Crikey, Scarface didn't curse that much. The sequence of events in the story may be creative, but the presentation is not. Any student that turned in that script would get marked down for single dimensional characters, excessive cursing (to the point of parody) and probably get a little note from the teacher asking if maybe they'd be more suited to a career in automotive repair.

And you're right: it is a matter of taste. I said as much in my closing. I like plenty of poorly produced media. But, as much as I enjoyed watching it, I'm not going to kid myself by trying to pretend that the latest incarnation of the Bionic Woman was any good (so bad they didn't even let it finish a season). Hey, maybe the control issues don't bother you: great. Maybe the herky jerky framerate doesn't give you a splitting headache: great. And maybe the night club scene didn't make you feel like you know what it is to be epileptic: good for you. As I said: I'm glad someone is enjoying the game. And maybe I'm being a little harsh when I say that it's all bad. Maybe objectively, when you add all the bad and good together, you end up with something that is just mediocre. But, as a matter of taste, I don't like playing mediocre. Not for $60, anyway. The Bionic Woman, at least, was free.

They're supposedly making a movie of this game. Now, if Michale Mann directed it and got a competent script writer, I'd watch it and I expect I would enjoy it.