Dog Days: Does The New Kane & Lynch Really Do Enough?

Lynch’s unhinged, psychopathic 50% of the titular double pack attempts to offer an alternative take on the usual third person shooter fare we get shoveled down our necks.  On some levels it succeeds, mostly due to the way Lynch himself is portrayed: the pacing is as quickfire as most gamers could stomach, the dialog rich and engrossing and the gunplay, surely the biggest draw in a game like Kane and Lynch 2, works well: bullets feel punchy, destructive and painful, aiming is deliberately loose and ammo, for the whole, is plentiful. From the player’s point of view, at least, it fits the persona of a man on the edge.

But Dog Days isn’t a tactical shooter – rather a head first freefall into the story’s forty eight hours of increasingly ridiculous and almost entirely unpredictable plot twists.  What starts off as a simple hit for the gangster duo rapidly descends into a full-blown war with the player continously feeling overwhelmed as the legions of dumb, scripted cannon fodder flood in from every entrance. For something that’s happy to push at the boundaries of psychosis and tease with an omnipresent sense of madness, the juxtaposition of formulaic bad dudes and a certain numbness at yet another round of easily dispatched goons is jarring.

Of course, IO Interactive’s third person shooter is exactly that, and whilst the story’s exposition takes some interesting turns it’s entirely happy to let the action tread familiar paths. I’m not expecting every game that hits the shelves to have a fourth wall so unbreakable the immersion is kept intact throughout the entire game but I am starting to wonder when titles like Dog Days are going to try something a little bit different. Checkpoints, chapter breaks and respawns are commonplace in videogames (and entirely necessary in some) but maybe it’s time for something fresh for the genre to come along and really shake up the foundations. It’s been a while since the revolution.

I’m talking about borrowing ideas from the likes of Heavy Rain, where death is final and conclusive, the story taking a new arc each time a principle character meets their maker. By way of example Kane, it appears, is invulnerable, merely taking a step back whenever a shotgun round finds its way to his chest – the player, naturally, has no such luck, although a brief pause from the storm is usually enough to recharge your health; another genre staple. I’m not saying all games should resort to single life scenarios but when a game tries so hard to be distinctive with its visuals it’s a shame that everything else seems so text-book. Enjoyable, sure, but hardly innovative.

I like Dog Days’ aesthetics, I think the shaky cam and the way it tears, blocks and filters is a brilliant idea and helps engage the player during the game’s most frantic moments. It’s like watching a home made YouTube video before the high definition version has finished processing. But the game still resorts to age-old principles despite being so inventive with the graphics, and when there’s true innovation out there (in the shape of Limbo, Flower et al) I’m just a little bored by the lack of progression with certain genres, those that seem happy enough to serve up the same gameplay we’ve been playing for decades, albeit with fancy new effects on top.

Will it ever change? I doubt it, and whilst Kane and Lynch’s second adventure teases us with deep characterisation and clever graphics, serving up gameplay we’ve seen dozens of times before doesn’t quite cut the mustard.