Kane & Lynch 2 beta impressions and trailers.

I recently managed to get my mitts on a code for the Kane & Lynch 2 beta so I thought I would share my opinions of the demo here.

First off chuck out all your opinions on the first game, It was poor but this is completely different. As soon as you jump into the single-player demo your dropped right into a gunfight in a small restaurant and this is where the game leaves it's first and probably biggest impression. The camera. It sits just behind the shoulder and acts like an amateur "Shaky" cam (A Youtube recording if you will) and it reacts to everything going on around you (movements, gunfire, blood and your surroundings). It immerses you instantly and for me at least it seems to be the biggest innovation in a genre that's slowly going stale.

Next up to take a bow is the sound design, It's nothing short of incredible, With loud and satisfying noises coming from your weapons to the sound of bullets in flesh it's all top notch and only adds to the immersion and representation of recent "hollywood" shootouts.

The graphics again are top notch even at this unfinished stage you can see that the game will be a looker and an original one at that, The shaky cam and amateur filmic quality show the graphics in a very different light to your usual games, It's dirty and dank but it looks so good.

Enough about looks and sounds though. How does it play? Well very well actually the cover system is as solid as gears with a quick tap of A to get into cover and the aiming is much the same as CoD with an assist on lower difficulties to help out newcomers. The shooting itself is very satisfying and your reticule flashes to indicate hits and kills. A couple of new additions to the usual third person shooting help with originality although they are nothing special, First off is the health system, much like CoD your screen slowly goes red and fades until you can't take any more and drop dead but unlike CoD if you take a shotgun to the the body for instance you'll drop to the floor from the blast and from here you can crawl and fire or a quick tap of A will get you back up and into cover. While we're on the subject of cover it seem most if not all of it is destructible with wood splintering and falling apart as realistically as possible. It's also worth noting you can pick up things like fuel canisters and fire extinguishers and chuck them around to get to foes stubborn enough to stay in cover.

All in all I'm impressed it's and incredible improvement on the first game and one I look forward to playing more of.

I'm going to try out the multi-player beta next so will update my impressions then, Until then check out the videos for some of the multi-player modes (it's all in-game by the way)