Kane and Lynch

I was playing Kane and Lynch last night (got a new Xbox 360 to replace the old one for my birthday!) since I found it lying around and had never played it and I was struck by the fact that it was a competent effort, but that it just didn’t have that pizazz that is necessary to make a game great. It’s got all the components of a great game but they just aren’t assembled in a way that makes it great.

There are small bits where all you do as a player is get out of a van and run across a room – that couldn’t have been a cut scene? It smells of stuff cut which leaves the rest slightly inchoherent and it quite desperately needs balancing in terms of both game play mechanics (too many snipers, too much pixel hunting and the lighting – by which you find badguys – blows).

It basically needs someone with fresh vision to come in and tighten it with a screwdriver.

But that’s the problem isn’t it? Someone new comes in towards the end of the project to ‘make it better’ but they don’t get the respect from the team since they haven’t been there from the start and the team itself is way too close to the product to really see the issues.

This is why people who can hold a consist vision of What It Should Be in their head, as well as being able to divorce themselves from that vision and play as a newbie would are worth their weight in gold. And they are few and far between these days.