Yes, you read with your eyes – those same eyes that are squeezing out a single tear for the lack of a new Hitman game – that Eidos and Io Interactive have confirmed Kane & Lynch 2 for release in 2010. The press release offers an entertaining snippet of hyperbole to go with this news: “Introducing a new visual experience, Kane & Lynch 2™: Dog Days is inspired by documentary filmmakers and the user-generated era. Every aspect of the game has been designed to deliver a fresh perspective to the words ‘intensity’ and ‘realism’ in video games.”
Wow!™ We can hardly wait.
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*headdesk*
Has PR hyperbole for video games ever not been boring and meaningless?
It was underwhelming…
AND NOW IT’S BACK!
This comment wins.
Well, at least we get a movie about the original game with Bruce Willis in. I’ll be Wowed!™ if it actually turns out to be good.
What was the first game like? I was tempted but awful reviews across the board put me off on release. Worth a bargain bin price pick up?
I’ve heard some good things about the story and characters, which made me want to play it; I’ve heard some bad things about the game itself.
Unfortunately, the latter is a bit of a moot point since the bloody thing skips one in three frames and hangs every few seconds for no reason whatsoever on my computer.
They should have put six more months of work into the graphics, but I don’t see why almost everybody is bashing this game. As I said before, if you can overlook some of the technical aspects, you are left with an entertaining action with great dialogue and enough atmosphere to send your average shooter into the corner, whining.
Yes because better graphics = better games right?
Kane will have a difficult job seeing down that scope.
“Documentary filmmakers and user-generated era?” huh?
I can concur with the article, more Hitman please. Blood Money was so ace, that a sequel in the same vein is really needed. The opera level is possibly the best game level ever.
I think that means it’s inspired by youtube?
forget hitman, where is Freedom Fighters 2 ? gamespot still lists it to be released before the end of the year (with a CANCELED tag of course) sigh …
Who the heck writes these things, do you have to have a license to write such nonsense and publish it ? Do you have to pass a written exam to get the license to prove that you won’t accidently write something that makes to much sense? What does the job posting look like for the person who writes these things, better yet what does the persons resume look like :P
Wanted : Pedantic idiot with hyperbole license and 4 years of experience writing things that take up large amounts of words without saying anything anyone can understand.
Resume : New to the job market I am exiting and fresh and bring new meaning to the word employee with my various abilities and skills that have never before been seen in the job market to this degree! I will wow you with hyperbolic statments and usage of company buzz words so that you won’t even realize you don’t understand what I’m saying you’ll just hire me on the spot and put me straight to work writing crap that no one can understand for press releases and video game adds.
Wanted: bitter writer-wannabe with inflated sense of worth and talent. Must lack sense of humour. Required immediately for assignment to comment threads all over the internet. Must supply own bile.
Don’t almost all video game marketing writers come from, or eventually move into games journalism?
You spend years learning to write about videogames, learn the industry, get contacts, get to know many PR people and how they operate, learning what works and what doesn’t, you follow LOTS of PR campaigns and at some point (probably more often than not) think “I could do better”.
Then some PR company comes along offers you 4 times what you can earn as a journalist (pre-bonuses), and all you have to do is exactly what you used to do, except pretending each game you write about is the best game you’ve ever played.
From what I’ve heard PR is one of the few career paths open to games journalists that will actually increase their pay.
I’d imagine it’s a hard thing to resist, especially for those less than stellar writers who are struggling mightily to gain income as freelancers.
@Metalfish : That’s fair ; ) Though also to be fair I’m not bitter or a writter-wanna be nor do I have an inflated sense of worth or talent. I don’t comment threads all over the internet just here nor do I have any bile so then again I suppose what you said isn’t fair at all. Interesting. As far as my sense of humour (sic) goes that is your opinion which is your right to have so you’re not going to hurt my feelings if you don’t think I’m funny mate.
In relation to the bile my comment was about how silly the press release was but your comment was a direct attack at a person so which of us has more bile in this case? At least I don’t wonder the internet personally attacking people I don’t know for God knows what personal reasons.
Shadowcat “It hammers at my retinas like an evil woodpecker of pure energy”
I didn’t mind the first one, until the Havana level anyway.
I stopped playing at the Havanna level, my team mates kept dieing in places without any cover and ignored my orders of staying still out of harm’s way.
Pissed me off so bad.
Strange how the press release fails to mention the “attempted sodomy” of the main characters and the fact that you spend at least one level running about with your genitals flapping merrily in the breeze.
Sounds like a piece of agricultural byproduct to me.
Has anyone done a “Kane and Lynch: Dogging Days” gag yet?
Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.Where is my Hitman V.
Hitman (47) is hiding in shame and self loathing after the Hollywood movie.
There was no Hitman movie, you loon.
No there wasn’t. No. NO.
The movie was actually quite good, you know. They should’ve just picked someone who looked more like an athletic killer instead of a terminal cancer patient.
The movie was actually quite good, you know.
There comes a time when things are said that even a novice troll knows will never be interpreted as sincere.
Fuck everyone that says hitman movie was good.
NO IT WAS NOT.
it was an abomination that had nothing to do with the games.Instead of a masterpiece like any hitman game or movie like Leon, they make ubershitty actiony shitflick…..arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhh getting angry just thinking about it.
Yes!
I feel like I’m the only one who loved the first game. It had flaws, definitely, including stupid boss fights and a clunky cover system, but it still had some amazing moments.
Did Kane & Lynch really sell that well enough to merit a sequel? I thought it did pretty meh at retail. Metacritic scores didn’t really show much love for the first either.
Sold over 1 million copies, theres no such as bad publicity.
I kinda liked the first game. It was a little rough on the edges, but had a special atmosphere due to the selfish, flawed and unlikable main characters. And a really, really depressing ending that made you wonder if it was actually good because it made you feel terrible.
I have no idea what the hell that press release even means. It is an indecipherable morass of almost buzz-phrases.
Still, I must admit that I rather like the idea of Kane and Lynch. I quite liked the first one, although it was a rather incompetent little shooter. The characters and most of the settings interested me, and those pleasures compensated for the mediocre gameplay. Although perhaps I am being too kind, since I paid only a few dollars for it and had absolutely zero expectations.
Is there a level in Kane and Lynch where you have to sit in a desert city and wait for a UN convoy to show up so you can snipe someone from an extreme distance while he’s in a limo? No ? What about a level where you sneak into someone’s penthouse apartment and kill him while he’s sitting naked in a hottub ? :P
Gee, someone got jealous of the MW2 overhype, and tried their best to match it…
Kane is aiming with the wrong eye.
The first shakey cam game?
Look at that headline picture.
Look at his eye.
Look at the scope.
Pretty much sums up how half baked kane and lynch 1 was.
That pr mailout should have started with a god damn apology.
But Hitman 1 was slightly broken too so hopefully they fixed things.
I wonder what reviewer will get fired for giving the second game a low score…
TBH I don’t blame Edios for getting upset over the Gherstmann review (though that of course is all still conjecture), not so much for the score (Personally I’d say it’s a solid 7 game), more for the fact that he seemed to imply the game wasn’t worth paying for.
In the defense of the people who fired him, Gertsmann was a horrendous reviewer.
Agreed on that front. He was no Shaun Elliot or Jeff Green.
I actually quite liked K&L. Sure it wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but the characters and banter was pretty good. Also it’s kind of amusing reading about all of the uproar over MW2 and the shooting of Civilians, given some of the levels in K&L give you plenty of scope to get crazy with the cheesewhip when it comes to innocent bystanders.
I’m willing to give IO another chance. They better not blow it this time
So. Not. Interested.
Considering how bad the original Hitman was, and how utterly mindblowing the sequels were, I’m going to give IO the benefit of the doubt.
IO are similar to Valve, in that they take a lot of time to polish turds into diamonds. Unfortunately, they’re unlike Valve, in that they tend to release half baked shit before it’s actually that good. The basic premise of Kane and Lynch was likeable enough, and there were enough “Wait, did I just do that?” moments to keep things going nicely (rappelling down a skyscraper, blowing your way in through a bulletproof glass window with a bomb, then massacring your way out through the streets is still a blast)… until Havana.
I liked KL1 … at least I liked the 4 levels that I could play.
For me, the game crashed on (or around) the 4th level. Every time I played it, it crashed. I couldn’t get past the crash point, no matter what I tried.
So there is no way that they could convince me to buy a sequel.
And as the OP pointed out, aren’t there like a million good franchises that aren’t getting sequels? Why resurrect a failed IP?
Great series have spawned from terrible games.
I point you to the original Hitman, the original Street Fighter.
Second that.
Then theres Blackadder and Men Behaving Badly. Fantastic shows with terrible opening series. I’m gonna give IO the benefit of the doubt here purely because of Blood Money showing how great their art direction and level design can be.
it’s rumoured this and hitman 5 have both been confirmed, it was leaked a while ago.
If I recall correctly they never did patch the PC version of K&L. Why any respectable gaming site would cover this under those circumstances is beyond me.
Also: Jeff Gerstmann.
The highly anticipated RETURN of the game that got Jeff Gerstmann fired!
Whoa, someone did not do the market research!
Woo! More Kane and Lynch!
Overall story shite, Havana campaign pointless, confusing shite, mechanics great, dialogue lots of fun…
…the bank level?
In split screen mode on the same computer?
FUCKING. HIL. ARIOUS.
Any game that has you wondering about your co-player starting to shout about ‘they’re all PIGS!’ needs some attention, as does it’s sequel. Also, CCTV aspects look amusing.
God damn it, NO. ONE. CARES. Stop wasting time on this shitty Kane & Lynch rubbish and give us another Hitman, or something entirely new and interesting.
Kane & Lynch was a load of bobbins made by morons for morons. Jesus, that this gets a sequel while other, more deserving games don’t just boggles the mind…
Dear IO,
I’m glad you’re pushing a new franchise and all but-mmrrrgghhhAAARRGGGHHH MORE HITMAN NEED MORE HITMAN MARGGHHBRGGGGBRGLH…
Yours,
Ian.
P.S. Also: Freedom Fighters 2.
OH GOD YES THIS. That game just… ended. So abruptly. On a romantic cliffhanger, too. Where is my Freedom Fighters 2, but actually properly free-roaming, IO? WHERE?
I loved the ending to Freedom Fighters.
Everyone: “Hooray, we won! We saved the city!”
Love interest: “Hooray!”
Main character: “Yeah. One city. Thinking about it now, this is all a bit of a futile waste of time, isn’t it?”
Love interest: “…..”
Main character: “Oh well, fancy a snog?”
Now that IO are done with the rather excellent and overlooked Mini Ninjas I’d say the next Hitman game is already in production alongside K&L2. Square Enix would be insane not to have them working on their biggest franchise.
Also a new good interview with IO at Gamasutra, basically admit they were pressured to release Kane & Lynch early and that it lacked polish
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/26110/QA_The_Then_And_Now_of_Hitman_Dev_IO_Interactive.php
Is that Walter Sobchak?
Very amusingly, if translated letter by letter, “Dog Days” is an extremely vile expletive in Chinese. Maybe it’s intentional? ;)
What is with that guy’s face in the back? And is that fellow aiming with his bad eye?
The original game was awful, really, on several levels:
* The shooting mechanics were reallly unreliable, maybe because of the aim for realism. Sadly, the same couldn’t be said for the A.I. I remember being stuck in one of the later levels, since I emptied 3 magazines with an M16 into a window where an MG-er was without hitting him ever, while he could snipe me effortlessly. If I play a tough *&^$#ing mercenary, I want to believe he’s any good in a firefight. Also, the stealth-sections were absolutely impossible to play stealthily.
* The story… it was gritty and realistic and gritty. Did I mention all the grit? You start out with an unlikable guy who is (rightfully) being sent to deathrow, but he is saved by his old companions whom he betrayed so that they can get back the money he stole from them. Makes you really connect to the character, right? The other guy is on medication since he kills freely without them, and together they go around the world… killing people. But I don’t mean just other armed mercenaries. From a huge crowd in a bank which you rob (!) to some young girl who is the daughter of a crime lord, you keep killing for the hell of it. Why on earth would I want to watch or even be a simple lowlife bastard (or two)?
I don’t see why they insist on making a sequel to this one, but I think I’ll stay away from it purposefully. Not many games have caused me to really loathe them, but this one succeeded wonderfully. Here’s hoping for another Hitman game, and one without the likeness of Timothy Olyphant.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/11/18/grimacing-kane-lynch-2/comment-page-1/#comment-359565
At least it’s guaranteed a 10.0 rating from Gamespot, should help with the Metacric score. :)
Have they photoshopped john malkovich’s mouth onto john goodmans face to make the guy on the right?
I kind of liked the first one, up to the Venezuela level (although the later assault on the bad guys house level was ok). It had some good ideas (admittedly all stolen from Michael Mann films) and some of the levels were great.
The combat was very shoddy for a shooter and about 90% of the complaints I’ve seen about it are actually about (drum-roll) Games for Windows Live which had all sorts of K&L specific glitches including one that meant you could only play the game through once after which it would permanently lock you out.
I think ultimately it failed because gamers don’t seem to like being the sort of anti-hero portrayed in K&L. They’d rather be some sort of future soldier with bowling ball sized arm muscles who makes wisecracks while massacring armies of repetitively faceless carbon copy bad guys and who suffer absolutely no negative consequences for their actions at all.
A revenge crazed ex-con/mercenary with a schizophrenic wife murdering sidekick probably doesn’t feature highly on many gamers lists of “characters I’d like to play”.
I think ultimately it failed because gamers don’t seem to like being the sort of anti-hero portrayed in K&L.
You’ve never heard of GTA then? Or even Gears of War? Everyone in that is utterly repulsive, and actually far less likeable than Kane.
Really though, I don’t think it’s that at all. It failed because it was simply a pretty poor game, and got infamously panned in the press.
Hyperbole™
I loved the titular character, BTW. It was like the old Road To * movies meets Guy Ritchie.
has anyone seen this german clip that is supposedly viral marketing for the game? http://gameone.de/playtube/2-nackte-maenner-hauen-einen-hund/581257
if there actually is a sequence in the game where you have to escape attacks while completely naked it will be one of those non events people love to talk about like the airport in MW2 :D
What an exciting™ announcement!