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Kane & Lynch: Dead Men

You can't take too many of those, you know

After hearing The7's terms - Kane's stolen loot and life in exchange for his family's safety - Kane starts his mission, with Lynch in tow as a watchdog. The two men aren't exactly friendly, and throughout the game their mutual antagonism keeps the mood tense. Both have a dark past of their own, and we find out more about them as the story progresses through cutscenes and in-game dialogue, and sudden moments of near-death introspection. When Kane falls down lethally wounded, hoping for an adrenaline shot that would revive him, the player gets short glimpses into his subconscious with haunting audio clips.

When one of your crew members gets wounded, you have to get to him quickly to administer adrenaline

The cover system in Kane & Lynch works pretty well: it's not too easy, so you'll keep moving instead of just covering up

Adrenaline shots are a great twist to keep a balance between lethality and playability without resorting to health meters, medikits or extra lives. They require a little bit of tactical thinking - if a crew member isn't close enough, you won't get your shot in time. Also, too many shots in a short time cause you to overdose and die. You'll also find yourself stabbing needles into wounded comrades pretty regularly: if they die, it's game over. You need to be careful, because the game's weapons are deadly, especially in close quarters. At longer distances, none of the characters are particularly good marksmen with anything except a sniper rifle.

You can pick up a variety of weapons from fallen enemies (and the expendable henchmen you have in a couple of missions), but Kane and Lynch always start each chapter with predetermined weaponry. There aren't any unlockable weapons: the duo don't quite share the weapon fetish of IO's Hitman games. You can give simple orders - follow, attack or defend - to each of your crew members, and there's even a very basic inventory system for swapping weapons with them, but you'll probably use it just once in the game. Even though you control as many as 16 troops at one stage, the tactical squad control aspect of the game sees very little real use.

The game's cover mechanism requires a bit more finesse than the Gears of War "push a button to stay in cover" style: you have to move to the right spot behind a wall or a pillar, and your character either sticks to it for cover or doesn't. This forces more mobility than most shooters with a cover system, as does the fairly inaccurate shooting: often, you'll have to get close to your targets to take them out. Although you fight against diverse opposition - policemen, security guards, yakuza gunmen, mercenary soldiers and regular army - they tend to behave very similarly, either staying in cover, shooting from an unprotected position, or coming at you gung-ho. Pretty much everything coming at you is scripted; Kane & Lynch is less a tactical shooter and more a display of gun-crazy violence.

I should be afraid of dying, but I'm not

Of all the times an action game has claimed to be "story-driven", Kane & Lynch does perhaps the best job I've seen so far. Even Half-Life has long sections of navigating corridors and solving puzzles, where the story's put on hold for minutes. Kane & Lynch's constant, short dialogue is sown into the gameplay, bridging the gap and advancing the story between cutscene cinematics. Cutscene direction is left to the player most of the time, as the camera remains in player control even though the characters are going through scripted movements. This works surprisingly well, as there are much fewer hands-off breaks from gameplay than usual, giving the game a great feel of continuity. Levels begin and end with traditional, directed cutscenes that contain longer dialogue and a whole lot of disturbing scenes.

Kane & Lynch is not an easy game. It doesn't have hard puzzles or particularly difficult combat (only one console style on-rails shooting sequence had me reloading several times), but some of the subject material is cringe-worthy and as Kane, you both give and take a lot of verbal abuse. Kane, Lynch and their various accomplices act like the hardened criminals they are: rude, violent and unpredictable. They talk the part too: not on particularly friendly terms to start with, the men start insulting each other and swearing profusely as things heat up. Ask your crew members for ammo too many times, and you'll get f-bombs instead.

Foul language is only a small part of what's disturbing and shocking about the game. Although violence has been trivialized in games to the degree that players will happily shoot dozens of people, not really caring if they're clad in Wehrmacht or L.A.P.D. uniforms, Kane & Lynch makes you feel uneasy because the protagonists' actions are wholly unjustified. The game makes no attempt to explain or rationalize their exploits; on the contrary, chapter descriptions recap the events laconically from a non-involved point of view. For example, after finishing the "Breakout" chapter, you haven't really accomplished anything. You've only managed to escape, without the briefcase you were after, leaving behind "a disturbing body count of the L.A.'s finest".

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: Single Player CampaignPage 3: Multiplayer: CO-OP and OnlinePage 4: Graphics and TechPage 5: Conclusion and Final Scores

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