Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is the latest release from the same people that created Hitman. And quite frankly, I expected better of them. As a shooter it's weak. As a squad based game, it's weak. The controls suck. The graphics can't possibly justify the pathetic frame rate. The story is weak. The characters are both hateful and hateable. And the dialog is a continuous stream of invectives.

This game is an example of just how awful a so called "AAA" title can be.

Seriously, it's awful. The first time I played it, I played for about 10 minutes before coming to the conclusion that there are at least 17,435 ways that I could better spend my time. Kane & Lynch falls between potential activities numbered 17,435 (eating my own toenail clippings) and 17,437 (licking a hot tailpipe). That's right, given a choice between playing Kane & Lynch: Dead Men and eating my own toenails, I'll get out the clippers.

The second time I played it wasn't really any better, but I figured that if I'm going to review it, I might want to check and make sure that it's actually a steaming pile of yak crap before I call it one. Yup, Kane & Lynch is, in fact, a steaming pile of crap.

As a squad based shooter it's just awful. It could be kind of good, but the controls do nothing but get in the way. Whose stupid idea was it to map weapon switching to a stick press? Cripes. That means I can't run and switch weapons at the same time. Idiots. And the AI is really dumb. And how do you cope with really dumb AI? You throw lots of it at the player. It's freaking ridiculous. The AI that's on your team isn't much better. My own driver ran me over. Hellooo?!? I'm standing here. stupid AI.

On top of the gameplay just sucking, I have no compelling reason to want to endure it. While the story might be the slightest bit interesting (I'll never know), the characters are so hateful and so thoroughly unlikeable that I don't care what happens to them. Actually no. I do. I hope they die. I honestly hope the story ends with their flaming deaths. The character you actually control, Kane, is obnoxious and evil, and his partner is a psychotic dipshit. Yeah, Kane yells at Lynch for killing all of the hostages, not because he cares that they're dead, but rather because killing all those people just pisses off the cops even more.

And the cursing! Oh my lord. It's nuts. I'm no prude - I'm perfectly at home with a well placed "fuck you, you fucking fuck!", but Kane & Lynch have the two foulest mouths I've encountered since watching the movie Hoffa. Just about every other word is "fuck". And like I said, it's not that I care, it's that it represents one of two things: either the writers are incredibly unimaginative, or the characters are. If the writer is so weak that all he can think to have his characters say is "fuck", then I can't imagine his story will be any good. And a pair of one dimensional characters that can only communicate using the F word are simply not interesting. Especially when they're assholes.

Next time I go shopping, K&L goes back. I pity the store that buys it.