As these presumably use the same assets to generate the exact same views, it gives us a good idea of how the tech copes in a range of different scenarios.Information seems to be rapidly coming out about the recently announced Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days.įirst up is Kotaku with some great news for co-op gamers - the sequel will support online cooperative play through the entire campaign.
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A look at the final retail game is therefore in order, plus of course we can factor in performance from the PS3 version too which we've yet to cover up until now.įirst up, a comparison of like-for-like action taken mostly from the engine cut-scenes.
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In terms of performance, how successful has IO been with its new engine? The 360 demo code revealed that frame-rate was variable depending on scene complexity, with plenty of tearing. Similar to Infinity Ward's strategy for Call of Duty, the developer recognises that in a shooting game, additional temporal resolution is well worth compromises in visual quality: put simply, smoother, more responsive gameplay works better in a shooter and makes it stand out when the vast majority of your competitors are operating with twice the lag and half the frame-rate. As we discussed in our look at the demo release of the 360 code, IO Interactive has aimed for 60 frames per second gameplay. So why did IO Interactive choose to go sub-HD in the first place? Kane & Lynch 2's strengths and weaknesses in terms of presentation and basic gameplay are all linked to the new graphics engine. Mileage may well vary but if you are set on purchasing Kane & Lynch 2, I'd strongly recommend taking breaks between each level - and that's a recommendation I don't think I've ever felt compelled to make in 20 years in the games business. Even with steadycam engaged, I still felt quite unwell re-playing the game on other platforms for the purposes of this feature. A steadycam option is built into the game to cut-down on the camera shake but this is only of limited help, having no impact at all on the cut-scenes for instance. Kane & Lynch 2 is really difficult to watch and play for extended periods: it makes my eyes water, it unsettles my stomach and for me, it induces headaches after just a couple of hours' play.
It's an interesting idea to use an artistic approach to cover up the deficiencies in game resolution, but it comes at a price. There's also an effect that sees the whole scene move in and out of focus as the scene shifts. It's all about turning the basic image into the kind of "livecam" documentary feed, so we have in-game approximations of digital noise, colour separation, camera shake, macroblocking and also some ramped up contrast which serves to bleed out a lot of detail in places.
The big basket of different video filters the developers have available can be applied to the scene at any point. What is certain is that both versions of the game operate with 2x multi-sampling anti-aliasing, and lower resolution alpha buffers are in place that add noticeable jaggies when transparencies are overlaid on characters and environments. Due to the range and number of post-processing filters in effect, the usual methods of measurement in comparing rendered pixels with native resolution seems to offer up a range of different numbers depending on the shot being analysed. The framebuffer itself is undoubtedly sub-HD on both consoles - 1024x576 or slightly higher would be a good ballpark guess, but an exact, definitive measurement is difficult to ascertain ( update: 1024圆00 for both systems looks closer based on some fresh shots we've captured). It's fair to say that Kane & Lynch 2 has a somewhat unique visual make-up.