Kane & Lynch: Dead Men had a lot going against it. From the unsavory subject matter (you murder hundreds of police officers), to the unlikable cast, to the pair of equally depressing endings, the game went completely out of its way to make you feel terrible about yourself. Most importantly, the gameplay (while not completely broken) was unrefined and in dire need of polish. To top it all off, it came from IO Interactive; expectations were understandably high, given the developer's success with the Hitman franchise. Dead Men showed a ton of promise, but ultimately settled for mediocrity. Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is a better game than its predecessor, but it's still too far behind the curve to be considered as a $60 purchase.

Some games can act as travelogues; one of the joys of being a gamer is in seeing how developers take a real place and show you a new side of it -- fictional or otherwise. Dog Days makes Shanghai look like a festering cesspool of unimaginable filth and misery. That aside, Dog Days has one of the most interesting visual motifs I've ever seen in a game. The player sees everything behind what looks like the HUD-less viewfinder of a low-quality video camera. On the default settings, the camera shakes and sways. When you break into a sprint, you may become nauseous. Fortunately, the "Steadycam" feature is there for people who want to play the game without becoming seasick. There are some really neat effects that hammer home the grungy surrealism. The whole game looks like a series of grainy, unfocused shots full of messy-looking quirks. Some headshots are censored with dynamic mosaics. Every time Kane and Lynch find themselves in an area that's brighter than normal, the level of overexposure makes The Dark Knight's interrogation scene look like any sequence from Pan's Labyrinth. The camera, while better than the one in Dead Men, struggles in tight spaces. There are several of those, unfortunately.

In keeping with the censored snuff film visual style, IO has decided to jettison the orchestral work of Jesper Kyd. I understand why this choice was made, but Kyd's work in Dead Men brought out the single tiny glimmer of humanity in the game. In Dog Days, all you hear is gunfire, explosions, screams, a few songs, and curse words. A lot of curse words. Fortunately, all of this gels with the bootleg aesthetic quite nicely, which makes the game feel like an unsettling bit of impromptu gonzo journalism.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days assumes that you went ahead with the final mission in Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. This sequel finds James Seth Lynch in Shanghai, as he reunites with his former partner, Adam "Kane" Marcus. They are here to see an arms deal through; Kane insists that this is going to be his "last job," while all Lynch seems to want is to settle down with his new girlfriend, Xiu. Things get pretty bad when they kill the daughter of one of the most powerful men in China, and it's not long before our protagonist scumbags hit rock bottom. Ultimately, it becomes a battle for survival and revenge. Like its predecessor, Dog Days tells a tale that nobody wants to hear. It's about truly rotten people in equally rotten situations; the opening scene is clearly meant to inspire revulsion in the player, and another one later in the game will probably have you squirming in your seat. However, don't be surprised to find yourself sitting there with a sort of righteous schadenfreude; there's a grim sort of satisfaction that comes with knowing that these people deserve every bad thing that happens to them. What's truly disappointing, however, is how poor the storytelling is. All we've got to work with is "We need to kill these guys!" or "We need to get out of here!" or "::insert expletive-ridden diatribe::" The marketing for this franchise seems to harp on the fact that Lynch is a medicated psychopath. So far in the series, we've seen a single of his "episodes," and that was very early in Dead Men. Given that Lynch is the primary character in Dog Days, the developers could have done some really interesting things with this character. For whatever reason, they chose not to. Maybe the pills are working... but psychological stability isn't a good fit for this franchise.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is the purest third-person shooter since last year's 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. This sequel doesn't set out to break any new ground. You just run forward and gun down bad guys. IO Interactive spent their time wisely, deciding to innovate less and polish more. I'll get into more specific detail in the Game Mechanics section, but for now all you need to know is that nearly everything is improved on; most notably the minutiae surrounding the gunplay. These improvements are nice, but they don't go quite far enough when it comes to the overall package.

Shooting things in real life is much more difficult than shooting things in a game. Unless, of course, that game is Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. The hit detection isn't broken like it is in Dead Men, but most submachine guns will empty an entire clip into the wall behind a guy before he finally goes down. Ironically, the shotguns are extremely accurate at long range. This isn't exactly a drawback; just a curious observation.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days presents itself as a cruel exercise in natural selection, but you'd be surprised at how much time it takes to complete the game... or more specifically, how little time it takes. If you've finished a third person shooter at some point in your life, it should take you no longer than five hours to finish Dog Days. The game's linearity does it more harm than good; while it certainly makes sense in the context of the story, it leaves the game feeling stripped down. As you wander each level, you'll wonder: "Did they hide something for me to find or unlock?" The sad, simple answer to this is "Not in the slightest." You run forward, take cover, and kill people.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is a leaner and meaner experience than Dead Men; unfortunately, it's so lean it could be described as gaunt. Luckily, most of the issues that plagued Dead Men don't end up as repeat offenders. Gone are the useless squad mechanics and pointless revival system. Instead, this game introduces a more hands-on approach to near-death moments. If you take a few hits, you will fall on your back. However, you will still be able to move around and fire your weapon. You can get up whenever you want, even in cover. Which reminds me: remember how terrible Dead Men's cover system was? They fixed it, for the most part. A simplified version of Gears of War's classic one-button cover mechanic does a much better job of getting you out of danger than Dead Men's unreliable and imprecise system.

I've saved the multiplayer component for this section for a reason: it's about mechanics, or more specifically, dynamics. There are three heist-based multiplayer modes, all of them being cooperative (?) modes. Don't confuse the question mark for something that escaped proofing. Fragile Alliance and Undercover Cop, as their names imply, revolve around the concept of betrayal. In Fragile Alliance, you can murder your teammates to avoid sharing the pot. However, doing so marks you as a traitor, which more often than not results in a quick death. Death is not the end, though; if you're betrayed and killed, the fact that you respawn as a cop makes revenge much sweeter. Of course, it's not as sweet as getting to the getaway vehicle with more than a million dollars in your backpack. I must admit; several of the Fragile Alliance matches I played were populated with players who weren't traitorous... at least not on purpose. Undercover Cop rectifies that potential issue by forcing one player to betray the team. Finally, Cops and Robbers places players on two definite teams. The multiplayer is fast, intense, and fun, provided you can get into a match with no serious latency issues. I only ran into a few during my time with the game, but I found it more difficult to actually get into a match. What stings the most is how the game only gives you a handful of maps while dangling the upcoming DLC in front of you like a carrot on a stick.

Once Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days falls to the $40 dollar price point, consider the score at the top of the screen to be ten points higher. IO's still got a ways to go if they want to elevate this franchise to stand proudly alongside the paragons of the genre. However, it's nice to see that they're working hard in a sincere effort to close the gap.