Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days

A former mercenary and a self-medicating psychopath respectively, Kane and Lynch return for a second slice of grisly, gun-heavy entertainment.

This time around, Lynch is living in Shanghai with his girlfriend and Kane has one final job to complete. This last payday should be straightforward but straightforward does not a shoot-em-up make and, within a level or two, it's all gone mammaries skyward. A local crime lord's daughter is dead at their hands. Lynch's girlfriend has been abducted. Hundreds of well-armed gangsters are on their tail, former allies have turned on them and the police are also shooting to kill. And thus the scene is set for assorted stand-offs and carefully timed gun play.

Given the ancestry and the typical evolutionary process of games, it won't come as a surprise that Kane & Lynch 2 ups the intensity and gore quotient considerably. It cleverly masks some of the excesses with handily positioned, pixellated censorship – which, to be fair, adds to the documentary sense of the game. Yes, the shaky cam stuff is a shortcut to immediacy but, as Paul Greengrass will tell you, it works and it's that verité grit, and the realism of the visuals, that give Kane & Lynch its not-so-unique selling point. Without those, and the not-bad-at-all multiplayer mode, this would be an alarmingly short disappointment.

That's not to say this is a bad game. It's not. The impressive film-like visual quality is backed up with palpable tension, well judged AI and enormous, hard-to-monitor arenas that you can't get through with gung ho ultra violence: you need to be patient, pick your weapon, work out the lay of the land and make sure you have cover and ammo to spare. Enemies will not fall from a single gunshot unless you have the right weapon or get a perfect headshot. The chances of this – thanks to shaky cam, the gritty, grey (often almost photo-realistic) colour scheme, the distance between you and your assailants and the evident efficiency of their body armour – are small. Very small. As a challenge, Kane & Lynch is a tough one. It's a shame then that the ending is oddly abrupt and it doesn't take a great deal of time – approximately 6-8 hours – to get there.

Some extra value is provided by the returning Fragile Alliance multiplayer games. Here you and your mates can commit elaborate heists and either celebrate together for a job well done or attempt to screw one another over by stabbing them in the back and keeping all the swag. These games do give the Kane & Lynch 2 package additional appeal, but on balance it's still not quite enough to break down genre barriers and make this an essential gaming purchase.