Hello, I had a similar issue and none of the other forum posts were helping me with this issue.
I know it is a few months old, but I was experiencing the same problem on my new system running windows 10 that was able to run the first game flawlessly.
What worked for me was looking on the steam Kane and Lynch 2 Dog Day forums, and someone said running the game in Windows XP compatibility mode worked, and it worked for me too.
To do this, go to the game's main directory, located the application file "kl2" and right click on it.
After, select properties from the drop down and go to the compatibility tab.
Check the check box for Compatibility Mode and run on Windows XP (Service Pack 3),
This doesn't fix the frequently posted about stuttering, nor does it make the launcher menu appear for me which only appeared on first game boot for some reason and not now. Either way if IO wants more fixes for free they can pay me.
Good luck friend, I like fringe action games so I wasn't satisfied with the "no one can get this game to launch" possibility so hope this helps.
