You never will grow out of video games and neither can you help someone to grow out of them. When you was 14 you may have played video games for hours a day and now you can barely get 20 minutes play time a week. You haven’t grown out of it, just other things got in the way. Your passion may have waned too but that doesn’t mean you have grown out of it. Everyone in their life has a few years were they are addicted to something, be it games, films, world of war craft, drinking etc.

If you’re with someone and you hate their video game passion and hope they grow out of it i wouldn’t hold your breath. People of all ages play video games, its no longer just for kids. Games just like films are made for all ages with some games made for everyone, others solely for kids and again others for just adults.

Instead of hoping they grow out of video games why don’t you find out more about what they are into. Take an interest in playing video games with them or just watch. Some games have amazing stories if you’d rather watch than just play and who knows you might even have some fun too.

But if you are getting older and are playing games less don’t think you are growing out of video games. You’re not, you’ve just found other things to occupy your time, be that having a family, a job or other hobbies. Just enjoy playing games and don’t worry about growing out of them, they’ll always be a part of your life some how.

This republished review was originally written in 2002, this review is unedited and appears as it did back then. We hope this review gives you an idea of how the reviewer felt at the time and at the end you’ll see a small review from today where you can see how well the game held up over time.

My own game, my own sodding game at last, Oh while Mario has fun in 3D worlds with lush green hills and beaches, all I get is a sodding castle full of scary ghosts while I cack my pants. Thanxs.

Luigis mansion may not be your typical Mario game, hell it doesn’t even star him, but his skinnier, shaggy and Scooby like brother. Luigis mansion is none of the typical Mario type platforms you’ve come to expect. Imagine if you will, Ghost busters, and that’s the game for you.


Luigi has won a mansion in a competition he didn’t even enter, Mario rush’s off ahead to find the mansion, saying he’ll meet Luigi there later. Luigi, after spending hours trying to find it, finally does. But there’s no Mario. Checking inside he gets an eerie feeling. Ghosts appear and chase after him, but he escapes just in time as a weird little man with a vacuum cleaner stuns the ghosts, allowing them enough time to escape.

Luigi has to use this vacuum to suck up the ghosts, Ghost Busters stylee. You also have a torch. To catch as ghost, you first have to shine the torch in their eyes, they hate light see, and this will stun them enough for you to be able to suck them up with your vacuum. You use the left control stick to move Mario around and the right C stick to control your direction. Using both at the same time takes a bit of practice but becomes second nature after a few minutes and allows total control over Luigi, which is what you’ll need.

The game basically see’s you going around the mansion clearing rooms of ghosts, solving small puzzles to get ghosts to appear and collecting money. On the way you’ll find out what really happened to Mario among other things. Collecting money found scattered about helps you get better portraits. All ghosts once captured are put into a machine and turned into portraits, for your sadistic viewing purposes.

The graphics in the game are simply stunning. With everything casting a realistic shadow, with the light from your torch moving them, making them stretch and twist around corners. It really effects everything that you see, even the ghosts look scary in a cartoony sort of way. Luigi has a wide range of expressions from gasps of fear, to clattering of his teeth and err, gasps of fear. In rooms he has completed he even whistles the annoyingly catchy theme tune. And a push of the A button screams out Marios name which you cant help but smile at.

As it stands, Luigis could be called the kiddies version of Resident evil, you have puzzles to solve, and ghosts to capture and kill. Rooms are locked until you find the key for it and bosses happen on every level. The game is fun to play, looks nice, sounds nice, but it is missing something. There’s just not that feeling to carry on. It all gets a bit brain numbing.


You’ll play because you want to complete it, not because you want to see what happens next, you know what’ll happen next. Another room full of ghosts to capture. Don’t get us wrong, it’s a good game, but more of a renter than a game to own and keep. You’ll play it, you’ll enjoy it, but you wont come back to it. Once you have done it once, seen it all you wont feel the need to do it all over again. As stated, it’s a bit mind numbing, you play it because you know you should get your moneys worth.

2012 Re-Review
At the time this game was often marked down because it wasn’t a Mario game and we were just as guilty for that. Like a fine wine this has aged beautifully and deserves a lot more respect than it gets. We’re glad its getting a sequel on the 3DS as it is a great game. Sure its short and can be completed in half a day but its like a good film, all action and no filler. It always looked amazing for a launch game and it still looks just as good. Released on the Wii today and it’d still be one of the better looking games out there. Nintendo have crafted a wonderful game, full of little touches and great controls.

Playing it recently theres lot of little things we missed and appreciate more now, if only we all at the time had realised what a great game it is. Well now we’ll put things right, buy it, it is amazing and should be in every Gamecube or Wii owners collection. It looks great, sounds great and is such a fun game. Sure its a little on the short side but it ends at just the right time leaving you satisfied.

House of the Dead: Overkill came out for the Wii a few years back offering us grind house based shoot em up action using the Wii remote as a light gun. We loved it but is the PS3 port worth picking up?

If you own the Wii version we probably have to say no. Not because its a bad game but because it is a basic port. Sega have improved the graphics by giving us more polygons and a better resolution but this for us takes away from the game slightly. Grind House films have this grittiness to them which the Wii did naturally. The cleaned up PS3 version just doesn’t have the same feel to it, even if it is prettier.

The game seems to play slightly differently as well. Maybe its the frame rate or the graphics being clearer but it doesn’t feel the same, which to us is slightly disturbing. Not as disturbing as the zombies…sorry mutants but its like listening to a CD after hearing it on vinyl. Things you expect to happen don’t but people new to the series won’t notice that at all.

The game has also been gifted with a couple of added extras such as an extra level which is a very nice edition but everything else is pretty forgettable. Whilst we can’t recommend this to Wii owners, we can recommend it to new owners. If you’ve never owned the Wii version then make sure you pick this up. Its pretty cheap and the move controller works just as well as the Wii remote ever did.

The game is pretty identical to the Wii version which in our books is okay. Its a great light gun game, a genre we hope gets an even bigger lease of life with Move becoming more popular. The same frustrations that are in the Wii version are here too but they are few and far between. Between this, House of the Dead 3 and House of the Dead 4 coming out on PSN, your move controller will get a lot of use.

By the way, did you know House of The Dead 4 has never been released on consoles before? PS3 owners are in for a treat, expect a review once it’s released.

Nintendo are normally rather shy about releasing figures for its download services, even going as far as to ban developers from making public what they made. However Nintendo have revealed some sales figures for the 3DS eshop.

A report from Forecasting and Analyzing Digital Entertainment estimates that $11.1m were spent on digital 3DS titles, encompassing remakes from Virtual Console and 3D Classics and original 3DSWare titles.

Surprisingly the most popular game was The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, originally a GameBoy and GameBoy Color game which was downloaded 338,700 times and generated $2.3m, according to CVG.

Nintendo pretty much dominates the top 10, whether that’s down to better brand recognition, better advertising or simply just better games is hard to dell.

Here’s the estimated Top 10 digital 3DS titles in full, according to FADE:

1. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (Nintendo) – 338,700 units ($2.3m)
2. Excitebike (Nintendo) – 481,100 units ($1.3m)
3. Super Mario Land (Nintendo) – 230,500 units ($1.1m)
4. Freakyforms: Your Creations, Alive! (Nintendo) – 112,700 units ($969k)
5. Pushmo (Nintendo) – 93,300 units ($634k)
6. Kirby’s Dream Land (Nintendo) – 84,500 units ($384k)
7. Let’s Golf 3D (Gameloft) – 43,200 units ($356k)
8. Donkey Kong (Nintendo) – 82,800 units ($348k)
9. Xevious (Nintendo) – 47,900 units ($301k)
10. Hyu Stone (Poisoft) – 50,300 units ($293k)

*note* The model in this picture actually likes and plays video games, girl gamers are not a stereotype or fantasy.

You love video games and want a girlfriend. You might even be wondering if this is even possible. Gamers are geeks and girls don’t like geeks right? Wrong! Girls love geeks, jocks, nerds, emos in fact there is probably a girl out there who shares your interests. So just because you play games doesn’t mean you can’t find a girlfriend.

But what if you want a gamer girlfriend, that sounds almost impossible. Again you’d be wrong. You may think playing games online will help you find a gamer girlfriend and it may, but you’d be spending a lot of time looking. Instead look closer to home, there are probably many girls you know who play video games. Sure they may not have a kill to death ratio on Modern Warfare to rival the best but they may enjoy Tetris or The Sims or Mario Kart. They may borrow an older brothers console instead of owning their own. So chat to girls you know, ask them if they like any computer games. You may find exactly what you are looking for right in front of you.

But before you do that get rid of the myth that is the hollywood girl gamer, the girl that has all the consoles, imports japanese games and cosplays on weekends. Sure a few girls like that exist but most girl gamers don’t do that. Get yourself a girlfriend and share your interest with her, she may be a closet girl gamer and not even know it. She may go from playing Nintendogs to playing Left 4 Dead or taking an interest in the perks you use in Modern Warfare.

Make sure you are actually interesting. Just because a girl plays video games doesn’t mean she wants to talk about them all day every day. Same way not every girl plays Final Fantasy. Girls are just like you, they like different types of games and have their own interests. If you talk about games all day you’ll just bore not just girls but anyone. So go to clubs, go to pubs and hang out with friends. Chat to girls about their interests and they may very well like video games. Chat abit about what games they like, what they’ve played but also talk about other interests and hobbies.

Hanging out a GameStop or other video game store might sound like a good idea to pick up girl gamers but they’ll either be with their boyfriends or you’ll just creep everyone out. Picking up girls at a video game store is not a good idea. Maybe you have a video game club at your school you can go to to make new friends? You might even meet a few girls there.

Getting a gamer girlfriend is no different to getting a girlfriend, its just finding a girl who shares similar interests to you. If you want a football mad girlfriend you’d do exactly the same things to get a gamer girlfriend, find a girl you like who likes you who also shares your interests. Good luck!

Sonic hasn’t been good for a long time. Since the launch of Sonic Adventure 1 which whilst flawed was amazing for the time, all sonic fans have longed for a good sonic game again. We had some games offer us hope such as Sonic and the Secret Rings and Sonic Colours but for the most part its been filled with Sonic Heroes, Sonic 06 and the Sonics unleashed of this world.

So Sonic Generations has a tough time to convince us its any good, lucky for it then it is. Sonic is back on form with Sonic Generations. Generations sees you playing as modern 3D sonic as well as classic 2D sonic. Gone are the friends, gone are the stupid levels full of speed and gone is the crap gameplay. Sega have looked backed at the classic Mega Drive Sonics to make an amazing game looking back over 20 years of Sonic history.

The game features 2D style levels for classic sonic and a mix of 2.5d and 3d levels for the more modern sonic and both work extremely well. After the disappointment of Sonic 4, Sega have finally fixed 2D sonic’s physics so now he plays almost exactly like he did in his 2D adventures. Its not perfect but we are more than happy with how Sonic handels as the 2D levels are filled with classic platforming action which has been missing for a long time. 3D sonic doesn’t handle too bad either, whilst it is similar to other 3D sonics with lots of running and set pieces the levels are packed with alternate routes and that awesome 2D platforming action.

Graphically Sonic Generations looks amazing with tonnes of detail and little touches. Sonic has never looked so good and with hardly a hint of popup its the most complete and feature pack sonic world we’ve seen in a long time. We can’t forget the music either, crammed with tonnes of sonic tunes from over 20 years you can pick the music that is played on each level or listen to some amazing remixes of classic themes.

If you can’t tell we love Sonic Generations, it’s filled with tonnes of nostalgia, little touches, loads of levels and most of all, fun. The Sonic cycle is now broken and we recommend you pick up Sonic Generations if you after some classic platforming action.

“The original arcade trilogy together for the first time in a single package, just the way you remember it. Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 enhanced with online play, leaderboards, and Achievements. Maybe you were king of the arcade, but how do you stack up against the whole world?”

Graphics: 4

Just the way you remember them from the days of your prime! Nothing more (unfortunately), nothing less (thankfully), which is a real shame as it wouldn’t have killed NetherRealm to have touched up the character sprites and level details a little bit. In fact, why the heck wasn’t this game given a complete visual overhaul and called Mortal Kombat Arcade Kollection HD instead? I put it down to two things: laziness and staying too true to keeping the collection ‘arcade perfect’, as has been emphasised uncountably by the developers. What they mean by ‘arcade perfect’ is that they’re going to do nothing more than port the game to modern consoles. Great, eh? Both the character sprites and levels are really showing their age (the first one is nearly twenty years old, man!), and if that’s what they mean by ‘arcade perfect’, then they ought to be ashamed of themselves. In fact, maybe they should have constructed a real life Pit level and jumped onto the spikes themselves from the sheer embarrassment that they’ve drummed up. Furthermore on the subject of clinging to the ‘arcade perfect’ thing, some eyebrow-cocking optional visual filters have been included in the settings menu as a blatant attempt at covering up the creaking visuals, but they turn out to be nothing more than severely poor cover-ups. They make it look worse, in fact! I mean, trying to trick your audience with poor visual filters in an attempt to pave over the obvious cracks in their work is one thing, but completely failing with the execution is just plain embarrassing. There are five visual filters, including the default one: Klassic (default), Painted 1, Painted 2, Smooth, and Arcade. All of them are shit; ‘Smooth’ just looks blurry and makes me want to spray Mr Sheen all over my screen and polish it. Urgh. Again, a complete visual overhaul would have been wonderful, but it just didn’t happen. ‘Arcade perfect’, eh? The only thing this game does perfectly is deflate the player’s happy memories beyond belief.

Sound: 3

Those classic lines of “GET OVER HERE!” and Raiden’s infamous and universally recognisable “AZEEBADADDEE!!!” and “ADDABAZZAR!!!” and their primeval charm are still very much there, as well as all of your favourite sound effects and retro soundtracks… when you’re actually able to hear them. Blame it on the bugs and glitches that surround the game and poke at it with a thorny stick as they wreak their raging havoc on Mortal Kombat’s beloved sound effects. There’s no doubt that you’ll experience your unfair share of audio drop-outs, failed sound effects (especially move announcements) and a stuck record-like repeating soundtrack, to name a few. Believe me, less than a few in any case is bad enough, but these particular titles takes it to the next level… and the next level… and then to the boss… IT JUST DOESN’T STOP! Horrid.

Playability: 6

Unforgivable glitches aplenty. Hardcore dedicators to the classics, and those who really put the time in, should be able to work their way through the game’s screw-ups without much trouble, but anyone playing any of the three titles will inevitably experience a mix bag of glitches along the way, and there’s no telling what particular ones will jump up and bite them on the bottom. Multiple times, no less. There was one particular glitch/whateveryouwannacallit in MKI where I was playing as Sub-Zero against Raiden on the Pit level, and Raiden – who was at half health – performed his “AZEEBADADDEE!!!” (or Torpedo to those who are unfamiliar with it) move, which I managed to duck out of and uppercutted him before he was able to impact me, and, completely out of the blue, it sent Raiden screaming and hurtling down into the spikes as if I’d performed a stage fatality! That most certainly wasn’t the case, however, as all I’d done was uppercutted the dude when he was at half health, which should have chipped a bit of his health away and nothing more. WHAT THE HECK?! Glitches aside, there’s no doubt that you’ll have a great time playing through the three titles. And whether you’re a novice or a master, it doesn’t matter – it’s all very much a learning process in the most raw form where you find your best-suited character and develop your very own idiosyncratic fighting style, which just so happened to be a staple of the classic fighting games of the early nineties, and the MK games do it best. That spirit certainly hasn’t died. Another staple of classic fighting games, particularly the MK series, is the simple controls, and they honestly don’t come more simpler than this, making each and every match something very special indeed. That’s putting the glitches aside metaphorically, however – something that can’t be applied to the actual game – so you’ll no doubt have your ups and downs with the annoyances, but many hours of joy with the good stuff too!

Multiplayer: 2

The bane of the game’s existence. And a very unfortunate one too. Online multiplayer is close to completely unplayable, with MKII suffering the worst of the bunch. The whole thing is plagued with EXTREME FUCKING LAG and it never lets up. Call it a glitch in the system or whatever you want, but it just won’t do. Matchmaking feels like an utter chore; picking ‘Quick match’ simply doesn’t do anything at all; ‘Friendly Kombat’ won’t find you a match until you create your own match, play it and you’re put back in the lobby. What an absolute joke. I honestly wish it were just a funny joke, but it’s the reality of the game unfortunately. The only match type that resembles anything even close to functioning at all is Ranked, but even then you still have to put up with the scumbag lag, and it renders the whole thing redundant and utterly unplayable.

Accessibility: 7

Now, there’s two schools of practice here. Jumping into the game and getting to grips with it all is as easy as 3.142, but in terms of the difficulty, it’s a nightmare. All three games – MKII especially – won’t go easy on anyone, let alone newcomers. Even on Very Easy, the game is unbelievably insane, and I reckon that even a Very Very Easy would be stupidly hard. There’s a reason for this, however, but it’s not a very upstanding one: The games are ports of the original coin-operated arcade machines, which means that the difficulty has to be stupidly high/unfair for the fact that the arcade proprietors back then wanted to make as much money as possible from their machines, and what better way to do it than by turning the difficulty up waaaaaaaayyyyy past maximum in hopes of exploiting the coins of many, many, many kiddies on pocket money day? It’s a horrible and inexcusable ploy, but we’re stuck with it and it’s damn hard to conquer. And if, like me, you were never a fan of blocking in Mortal Kombat, I’m afraid that’s going to have to change if you wish to stand a chance at succeeding in the game at all. Grr. That said, and as mentioned up there, jumping into the game and getting to grips with it all is as easy as burping (I hope you find that easy…), and it’s a joy to be able to go from match to match (no matter how hard) knowing that you’re fully at ease with the controls and functions of the whole thing.

Replayability: 6

Until a patch is put out (if it ever happens), multiplayer is a big no-no. I played hours of the multiplayer just for the purpose of this review, because there was absolutely no other reason to play it in the state that it’s in. I wanted to enjoy it, but it’s just impossible to do so. Now, take the standalone Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3′s multiplayer – it’s brilliant! It’s brilliant because IT WORKS unlike this pile of rubbish. Of course, sometimes you might not find an opponent to play against in the standalone, but that’s down to nobody else playing online at that exact time, as opposed to Arcade Kollection’s matchmaking simply failing to work at all. And when you do manage to find a game, you’re bitchslapped with horrible lag, so you wouldn’t want to play it anyway. Thanks for the Catch-22, NetherRealm! Bastards… Okay, so it’s well established that the multiplayer yields a big, bold “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”, but that’s not to say that the river of replay value has run completely dry. Oh no, no, no, for it’s single player to the rescue! Now, the standalone UMK3 is a brilliant game, but after playing the original MK and MKII in the collection, all attention instantly shifts to those two little beauties and the standalone is easily tossed aside. They’re not beauties in their execution, but in terms of their replay value, they’re fantastic. The original MK, in particular, has that special little something running through its veins that you just can’t help coming back to. Put it down to it being the first-born of the series, or whatever you want, but you just can’t help coming back for more! MKII warrants something special and attractive too, but the brutal difficulty, even on the easiest setting, will turn players off within a minute… but it’s so hard to shake off the urge to give it another go every now and then. And as for UMK3… well, it’s the wild card of the bunch, I’m afraid, and only if you become bored of the other two – or if it’s your favourite, of course – does it prove useful. So, in essence, single player = yes, multiplayer = fuck no!

OVERALL

An epic disappointment if there ever was one. I was extremely excited about this game – finally being able to play the originals and all that – but all it did was turn glorious nostalgia into nausea. My biggest gripe is that the guys and gals at NetherRealm were way too attached to the ‘Arcade perfect’ thing, which, to be sharply honest, is complete bullshit. Authenticity? Hardly. Laziness and lack of love and respect for three classics? Undeniably so. They pushed the whole ‘complete with all of your favourite glitches just the way you remember it’ thing waaaaaaayyyy too far… BUT WHY?! It’s just a broken game, and there’s no two ways about it. In fact, here’s another insult: the very existence of the game is like pissing on the ashes of a beloved relative. With all of that said and done, providing you can work around the glitches and maintain your sanity, you will have a blast playing through the golden oldies again and again and again; all without having to pop fifty pence after fifty pence into a coin slot, much to the disdain of arcade owners worldwide. You’d be bankrupt if you were playing MKII at the arcade, though, believe me. Also, the Back button to pause the game? Umm… WHAT?!

Buy, trial or avoid?

For the first time in Gamesoup history, there’s two things to consider here: If you have very fond memories of banging away at the three classics standing in front of an arcade cabinet or on a humble controller at home, this collection is an essential purchase the hardcore fans (with mega emphasis on hardcore fans). For those new to the series, however – while it might be a nice thought to see where Mortal Kombat 9 or the ill-fated Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe originated from – this particular handful of badly cut gems won’t be doing you any favours. You’re more than welcome to try, though! Just remember to wear a pair of gloves to prevent blisters when playing Mortal Kombat II. (You might want to think about investing in damages insurance too.) Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Final score: 4/10

I Rescued The Princess. She was in another castle. Stupid, stupid princess. She is never in the right castle, why can’t she just stay still. But we will rescue her, even if we have to check out every other castle.

Buy I Rescued The Princess on a shirt from Casually Hardcore. This design comes on a huge range of shirts, tops and hoodies as well as buttons and stickers. Go grab yours now.

Perfect for the gamer in your life. Please share with fellow gamer’s or like on Facebook!

Click here to buy this item! – I Rescued The Princess T-Shirts & Clothing

I could just write that Mario has appeared in over 170 video games and let you decide the answer. But that wouldn’t be much fun would it. What about if I told you that Nintendos last new franchise character was the Pikmin? A game released in 2001. Every hardware cycle we get a new Zelda, a new Mario and if we are lucky a new F-Zero or Pilot Wings. You can almost tell the pattern of Nintendos releases, new Mario for near launch, new Zelda a few years down the line, Mario Kart a year after launch, a random Pokemon game and in between the other major Nintendo franchises unless they have skipped a generation.

Nintendo are not the only company to rely on franchises, Sony used to have the Crash Bandicoot games along with Metal Gear Solid, Tomb Raider and Resident Evil. Microsoft on the other hand had Halo and errm more Halo. Yet these companies bring out new IPs all of the time from Gears of War to Resistance whilst Nintendo is still trotting out the same 20 year old characters without bringing anything new to the table.

Nintendos characters are probably more recognisable than the name Nintendo itself, its actually smart business sense to bring out these brands every few years but its been so long since Nintendo gave us some new characters and franchise. Even Wii Sports whilst a new franchise was just a few mini games put under a simple name. Wuhu island being Nintendos latest ‘character’, its not even a character! Its just a way to save money by using the same island in all sorts of different games.

As I mentioned, Mario has been in over 170 games in his 25 year history. Even Link is appearing in more Zelda games. When Zelda: Ocarina of Time was released in 1998 on the N64, Link had only appeared in a handful of titles, since then 11 more titles have been released, almost 1 a year. Zelda at one time was a game people spent years looking forward to the new adventure as new information was drip fed to the media. Now you can’t help but trip over a new Zelda title with 3 being released in 2011 in the space of a couple of weeks alone.

Nintendo are clever in that they let some titles rest. We can’t wait for a new Wave Race, 1080 or Luigis Mansion but Nintendos key franchises get churned out almost every year and in the case of Mario every few months. There was once a time when a single Mario platform game was all you got for a few years but we’ve had at least 3 over the past couple of years along with various Mario Karts, Mario Parties, Mario playing tennis, golf, monopoly, Role Playing, Olympics and various other sports.

We’d love for Nintendo to come up with some new characters and franchises. Luigis Mansion and Pikmin were so fresh at the time when other games like Resident Evil and Tomb Raider were getting a bit long in the tooth. We don’t want epic games, in fact during the Gamecube launch, Nintendo set about making smaller, quicker games which they sadly dropped after giving us classics like the already mentioned millions of times Pikmin.

So come on Nintendo, its been over ten years since your last original idea. Instead of churning out Mario Party 67 or Mario backwards world, give us a new character and a new franchise to enjoy.

Overview
“After a simple job ends in a blood bath, Kane and Lynch are forced to face the consequences of their actions…”

THE GOOD
- Good voice acting (apart from Glazer’s stereotypical “cor blimey, mate” English accent)
- The handheld camera idea produces a decent platform of immersion
- The beginning of the ‘naked’ level is gruesome!
- All forms of the colourful lighting look banging!

THE BAD
- Crap graphics; poor character models, textures and environments. Pretty much everything is graphically poor
- Controlling the character is a bit iffy and annoying
- The cover system is utter shit
- Poor A.I.
- Delayed sound when a lot is happening on screen
- Serious framerate issues when explosions occur
- Haven’t we seen this stuff many, many, many times before?

Graphics: 4
Sound: 4
Playability: 3
Accessibility: 6
Replayability: 3

OVERALL

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! Ohhhhh fucking dear, Kane & Lynch. Look, I never had much hope in this game being even remotely good in the first place, but I thought they’d have at least hired a team of semi-skilled developers instead of four blind Sixth World country inhabitants slapping at a keyboard for twenty two hours a day without food or water. Fucking hell… Okay, I’m really starting to wonder if OXM were being sarcastic giving this splat of slow-roasted pig shit a nine out of ten and deeming it a “lovingly crafted, full-bodied shooter.” I’m also starting to wonder whether the handheld camera idea was just a sly way of covering up the poor graphics and very frequent visual screw-ups, such as jittery enemies and, more specifically, an invisible Kane holding a cigarette at the beginning of the “Laying Low” mission, in which they were most definitely not laying low as yet another wild gun battle ensues not long into the opening of the mission. Speaking of which, this game is yet another disgusting bottle of perfume using the same formula: running, encountering enemies, fighting them and then moving on to repeat the process not even a minute later. There’s a helicopter in there somewhere, but that’s pretty shit too. However, Kane & Lynch 2 plays much better than Dead Men, which I consider nearly unplayable with its close-to-non-existent cover system and… well, all of it sucks rhino arse actually. Remember my “wet fart” remark from last Monday? Well, this game is exactly that, only you discover a slightly more manageable amount of bum jelly clinging on, as opposed to a tub full of the stuff (a la Dead Men). That’s not to say it’s a good game in the slightest, though. I would love (complete and utter overstatement) to have experienced the multiplayer, but it appears that no-one plays this game online. Why am I not surprised? Arcade Mode isn’t anything to madly blog about either. The A.I. is horrid and the mode itself is completely dull and flat. The highlight of it is spending your naughtily earned cash on new weapons at the end of the round. Even that is way more enjoyable than the entire campaign and Arcade mode combined. But hey, at least a fucking online pass wasn’t needed for online play (or the lack of it).
Buy, rent or avoid?

For the first time on this blog, I recommend that you completely avoid this game, my dears. Are the reasons above not proof enough?
Final score: 3/10