As you may have read me and Derf both picked it up for cheaps to play the campaign in co-op, as unlike its predecessor it does feature online co-op. We played a few levels already and we're having fun, although it's more the kind of 'WTF IS THIS' fun than anything related to actual sheer gameplay joy.
I'm playing as Lynch, the schizophrenic bald guy with the beard who has some Asian girlfriend at home. Derf is Kane, the dour professional who has just arrived in Shanghai to do a 'quick n'easy' job with Lynch for cashes.
That's the setup. After that, neither of us have any idea wtf is happening.
I mean, the game just tries SO hard to show how gritty and dark and whatever it wants to be, but it's basically just a cliché on legs. Not that it matters too much - it's still fun with two peeps and going on a rampage in the (I must say) well-presented Shanghai is fun in itself.
But some highlights:
- EVERY level starts with Kane & Lynch doing something 'normal' which then devolves into a massive shitstorm. In the first 2 minutes we visit some CHinese guy who we wanted to talk to, or something, and 15 minutes later we're killing 50 of his friends, shoot his girl and he kills himself. Wow. Kane/Derf hadn't even brought his suitcase to the hotel! Then some bald ugly guy picks us up in his car and we're rammed by 150 mobsters on the highway, which we all kill. Afterwards we eat noodles in a restaurant and a SWAT team barges in and starts shooting the place to shit. LOL. Standard reaction to almost everything in K&L: WTFFFFFF
- We only encountered two 'real' co-op actions in the game: you need to lift garage gates with 2 people and give each other a lift to get over walls. All the rest is basically Serious Sam with more cover and less forgiving.
- Me and Derf developed a 'no witnesses' policy.
We shoot everyone we meet. Leads to hilarious moments like when we walked through that sweatshop and shot 25 innocent worker women in the face and no one mentioned it or none of the other workers ran away. they just kept sitting there. Also: Lynch saying 'we can't act suspicious, we're going into the streets so stay cool' and us then shooting the first guy we meet on the street. And the best was when we met a cop who went "Please don't shoot, I don't want to d..." with Derf shooting him in the face before he could finish his sentence. Yeah...we're going to hell.
-10 minutes into the game, we took 15 minutes figuring out how to jump over a 1-foot wall to continue a 'mad chase' of some guy. I guess he stopped for noodles as we figured out how to do it or something, cause we didn't lose him. In the end I had to find the solution on a youtube walkthrough vid...you need to take cover behind a wall (ie crouch), then press cover again and you jump over. Worst intuitive system evah.
Don't get me wrong, it's fun, but only cause it's co-op and because it feels like playing a ridiculously OTT action b-movie. In singleplayer, I don't think anyone would want to touch it with a 10-foot pole.