Kane and Lynch escape from the bus that is taking them to death row. Kane is brought to talk to the criminal gang “The 7” who tell Kane that he owes them money and has three weeks to repay. Kane complies because they have taken his wife and daughter hostage. Kane doesn’t have much luck, and this leads to some entertaining missions.
You are basically anti-heroes since you are playing as a criminal, and have to shoot many cops and security during the opening missions. There’s plenty of violence and swearing like a typical gangster-style film. Kane is quite ruthless but puts his family above anyone else. Lynch is a bit of a psychopath and needs his medication to think straight.
I found it odd that the first bit of gameplay was full of action, so you already learn how to hide behind cover, switch weapons, and fire guns. Then for the second mission, you have to teach Lynch these fighting mechanics, even though you clearly both know how to fight. Also Lynch was the one that helped you escape the bus in the first place.
The game plays like a third-person cover-based shooter. However, other franchises which were around at this time implemented this style much better, and subsequent games improved the genre. The enemies often feel very bullet-spongey, which is made worse by the fact that your bullets aren’t accurate; there seems a random deviation. You can use a lot of bullets when taking down one enemy.
If you are crouching, you should automatically hide behind cover when you approach it. Most cover can be destroyed, and I felt you often weren’t agile enough to quickly escape to another location. Other games had either a roll/dodge, or an ability to move between cover.
If your team members fall, then you have to revive them. The AI will never revive others apart from you. You revive each other by injecting them with adrenaline which basically has a cooldown when you can be revived again. If you fall shortly after being revived, then the revive attempt kills you because you “overdose”. The revival process is quite slow, and you have to put up with the screen whiting out as Kane recalls his memories. I guess it’s like his life “flashing before his eyes” and giving him a new lease of life. It’s an interesting idea, but if you die alot, then it becomes frustrating.
You can issue some squad commands; tell them to target an enemy, move to position, or to follow you. Most of the time you don’t need these commands, but on a few missions they seemed to either go gung-ho and get themselves killed, or they seemed to hold back and wouldn’t follow you until you issued the command.
There were a few bugs. I had a crash near the end of the 1st mission and had to start the level again. Another level I was stuck in place and had to restart the level again.
There was a massive difficulty spike in the “Freedom Fighters” level and I had to knock the difficulty down. Interestingly, when I looked up videos on Youtube, there seems to be a few people claiming they have it on the hardest difficulty but they seemed to be up against about a third of the enemies the game threw at me, and they seemed to have amazing accuracy. I can only assume many others found this level impossible. I knocked the difficulty down to get past this point.
The game took me around 6 hours to complete, but I reckon I was probably stuck on Freedom Fighters for an hour, and I had to replay some sections due to crashes. It’s definitely a short game, and could have done with a bit more polish. I quite liked the fact you were playing as criminals, and some of the mishaps they encounter is really entertaining. There’s plenty of aspects to improve on, and I am very surprised this game got a sequel given it was fairly poorly received.