The days of the Dog are grim indeed
Take one psychopath, one mercenary, sprinkle in some personal history, a lack of real trust, and some desperate need to do anything for some money, and what do you get? A visceral, bloody mess of a game that leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, and genuinely rattles the gamer with the depths of its despair. And yet, taken at face value, K&L2 manages to be more than the sum of it�s parts; whilst a very stripped down, to-the-point shooter that disorients the gamer with a lack of explanation, reasoning or even proper realism, Square Enix have succeeded in creating a title that actually sticks in your mind for all the right reasons.
So, the controversial (for all the wrong reasons) duo are back, despite the best efforts of scandal and backlash against the first title. Taking the basic ideas of the good but flawed K&L: Dead Men, this cover based shooter has evolved into something more of an experience than a game. A new visual style, mixed with straight-out, no-frills shooting action actually make the game a weightier ride, and as a result, Dog Days is a better title than many would have expected. 
Dog Days has a serious ace up it�s sleeve in the presentation department – the visual trickery of the graphical overlay. Despite good graphics and a robust physics engine, the whole game is displayed as if from a hand held camera, or series of mobile phones: screens deliberately glitch, artifice, the display can lose colour or flood with wash, lights glare and lower the brightness, and screen tearing is present during quick pans. Check the pictures here – these aren�t badly edited, but actual gameplay shots. Sounds like a bad game engine? Nothing of the sort – the game is so gritty and visceral, the roughness of the display effects add a ton of atmosphere to the title. You suddenly find yourself immersed in the streets of Shanghai, buying into the very surreal story being told, and accepting the high levels of profanity, violence and sheer brutality of the games protagonists and their adversaries.
Sound is pretty good too, although the same effects attack your abilities to hear too: gunshots muffle and pop across the speakers, speech distorts as characters suddenly shout, and conversations flow realistically as characters talk over one another to be heard. Again, it is disorienting, and it makes following the scant plot clues even tougher, but again, you buy into the world.
Next up, The Story. Okay, this is going to be tough to explain, but the game essentially keeps you in the dark as to what is really going on for the bulk of the game. Adding to the effects and sound, the feeling of disorientation is heightened by the fact at no point do you really understand what is going on. Yes, they are the bad guys, and you have to fight them, but it takes a good chunk of the game to really get a grasp as to why everything is happening. BUT! This is another very good idea.
Why? Well, again, the atmosphere of the game hinges on being kept in the dark. You essentially jump from one battle to the next, hanging on by the skin of your teeth and trusting that you and your partner are doing the right thing. This leads to some excellent scenes whereby genuinely unforeseen circumstances spring up and you have to deal with them on the fly, and a well explained plot would take away the tension that develops from the feeling that anything can happen around the next corner.
But here is the stinger: as a straight out game, Dog Days isn�t fantastic. Early levels give you very poor weapons that make gunfights very tough, and the basic idea of shooting your way from cover to cover doesn�t really vary that much. This really is a title for action aficionados: if you don�t like shooting, or you want puzzles with your pistols, K&L2 isn�t going to satisfy your itch. This title is more of an experience: several disparate and jarring elements coming together to create something that you ride more than control – much like Heavy Rain, except in a completely different genre.
The single player is pretty short, too: I nailed hard mode in about 5 hours, despite a considerable number of deaths. Luckily, the multiplayer elements are good fun and well thought out. Aside from a good co-op mode (that the original sorely lacked), the versus modes include Cops and Robbers, Undercover Cop and the excellent Fragile Alliance mode.
Fragile Alliance has players working together to achieve objectives, but with a twist: the fewer players that finish a mission, the bigger share of the loot the remainders get. This sets up some fantastic gameplay, as you can never trust anyone: one turn of your back on the way to the end of the mission can see you wiped out by a giggling teammate. Undercover Cop works in a similar way, except one player is singled out at the beginning of the round, with objective of stopping as many of his teammates after the heist has been pulled. Cops and robbers is closer to standard team deathmatch play.
I�m not normally a huge multiplayer gamer, but Fragile Alliance has really awoken something in me: I haven�t enjoyed playing online this much in years (TF2, to be precise!). The tension of balancing assisting your teammates, watching your back and picking your moment to thin the herd really creates the kinds of tension so few online games achieve.
K&L2: Dog Days isn�t going to convert everyone to its cause: it is still, in essence, a mindless shooter. But it does manage to transcend the errors of its predecessor and deliver atmosphere in huge lumps, and the campaign is worth at least one playthrough. There is some real gold in the multiplayer, though: standard team tactics take a turn for the cerebral, as each player balances up their allegiance with one another against the larger rewards on offer.
One point I would like to make, however, is that this game deserves more of a chance than it will get: in the wake of the controversy surrounding supposed “score rigging” of the original, it would be easy to dismiss Dog Days as a bad title. It isn�t, it is just one that will not appeal to all tastes. Any shooter fan should at least give it a rental, as it will surprise as many players as it will repel. But at least you will get to experience the ride that the game takes you on, and feel the thrill that the multiplayer can bring to so many.
The Bad: Early guns suck; not much more to the game than the combat; does a deliberate bad job of keeping you in the loop with whats going on; first title controversy is guaranteed to knock both reception and sales
Bronze Y Award