Kane & Lynch: Dead Men

Double acts are rubbish. No, really, they are. You think you like them, but if you examine any example closely you'll see that you actually only like one member of the pair and are at best indifferent to the other.

Take Morecambe and Wise, for example. Eric Morecambe was a genius of comedic expression, whilst Wise was the deeply unfunny straight man. Or consider Batman and Robin – whoever wanted to be The Boy Wonder when they were growing up, prancing around in pixie boots and gaudy tights? Okay, maybe some of you did. We'll move on to save any further embarrassment.

Enter, then, the latest arrival to the double act guild: Kane and Lynch. Kane is a down-on-his-luck mercenary haunted by his past, while Lynch is an unhinged nutter on heavy medication. Think of them as kind of like a less objectionable Richard and Judy.

They find themselves thrown into an unlikely and unwanted partnership by a nasty bunch who go by the name of 'The 7'. In return for the safety of Kane's family and a place in The 7's organization for Lynch, they're tasked with pulling off the king of all heists.

And so begins Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, a 2D side-scrolling action-platformer, with the emphasis firmly on the action. Primary control falls to Kane, as you hop, skip and pump action shotgun through the levels via skilful use of the thumbstick. And as you do, Lynch follows along like a faithful puppy. Bless.

A quick jab of the '#' key transfers control over to the drugged maniac, though, which enables you to make use of his key ability – sniping. This becomes invaluable in taking out security cameras, not to mention distant sentries.

Whilst this feels neat at first and brings a certain freshness to a pretty staid genre, it merely serves to overcome specific obstacles. As such it soon reveals itself to be something of a gimmick, as Lynch's only other purpose is to provide sarcastic asides during the end-of-level story sections. Regrettably, we therefore found it to be a promising idea which never gets fully exploited.

At least the central gameplay is fun, with a real kinetic buzz to the action. Fire hydrants explode and thugs are dispatched with a gleeful sense of mayhem, while the punchy sound effects add effective punctuation to the onscreen fireworks. It's rare to find such aural pleasures in a mobile game, so it's definitely worth a mention.

Breaking up the relentless blasting is some extremely simplistic switch-pulling puzzles. Ordinarily we'd highlight this as an area for criticism, but in Kane & Lynch that would be missing the point somewhat. Here they serve merely to break up the intense action without disrupting the game's brisk pace.

Of more concern, however, is some iffy path-finding for Lynch. If the simplistic switch pulling can be forgiven for catering to the game's relentless pace, then this fault should likewise be highlighted for breaking its stride.

Lynch handles the basics of following your lead reasonably well for the most part, but occasionally he will let you down – often at the most inopportune moments. On more than one instance we were forced to take on a squad of respawning guards as we waited for our partner to climb a ladder or traverse a gap and enable us to take out a nearby security camera (which stops the guards from reappearing).

It's not game breaking, but it does interrupt the flow. And while we're in critical mode, we'll point out Kane & Lynch also suffers from a lack of variety – there are only so many times you can recycle the shoot-shoot-flick switch-climb ladder-shoot formula before it becomes a little dull. (We should also note that we experienced some stuttering performance issues on our capable N73.)

Enough negativity, however. Overall, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men remains a solidly entertaining package. True, it has one or two bright ideas which it doesn't quite manage to flesh out to our satisfaction, but fans of explosive action games should check it out – for the most part, this is a double act worthy of your attention.