IO Talks Kane & Lynch Reception

IO Interactive has spoken to IncGamers about the reception to the first Kane & Lynch game.
In an interview about the upcoming sequel, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, IO revealed that the lukewarm critical reception to the first game prompted a lot of changes in the sequel.
“Of course it was a blow for us,” IO’s Carsten Lund told IncGamers.
“It wasn’t nice to get these kind of reviews, and we had to make some very professional decisions around this.
“First of all, we decided that in the first game you kind of have two games, right? The tactical soldier military element and the crime shooter, and we needed to make a decision. What is the core of this game? We chose the criminal urban shooter instead, and made sure that the game features and that the game mechanics fit that particular genre.”
Dog Days producer Hakan Abrak told us that despite the game being a “huge success” the critical reception highlighted  problems, such as the “core shooter part, and the cover system.”
“But I think that there was also a lot of interesting stuff in Kane & Lynch 1,” added Abrak.
“The characters, the story, the atmosphere, the whole setting. I think it’s really interesting as a franchise, and that’s why we pursued it again.”
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men was released in November 2007 to middling reviews which criticized the sluggishness of the shooting mechanics and the lack of online co-op, two problems which IO has apparently addressed in Dog Days.
Check out the rest of the interview with Lund and Abrak here.