Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
Preview
Co-op and squad tactics
by Deis
previewed on PC
Kane or Cain?
A cooperative action game, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is developed by the creators of Freedom Fighters and the Hitman games. The latest offering from IO interactive follows the journey of two men – the titular Kane and Lynch.
Kane’s name is probably inspired by the Biblical Cain, whose main claim to fame was the murder of his brother. Cain is, along with Judas and Brutus, one of the more famous betrayers in history. Now, who knows where this is going? It’s a videogame cliché, and it’s not the only one to be found in Dead Men.
Story unfolds
Following the death of his two-year-old son, Kane’s life takes a turn for the worse. Unable to cope with his own guilt, and the blame attributed to him by his wife, Kane skips the country. Leaving his job as a consultant, he becomes a mercenary.
After six years of this, Kane is contacted by a mysterious group, known only as The Seven, ‘a Brotherhood of unlimited power’. Much like the mafia, admission to their ranks involves following stringent rules, with the threat of instant execution if they are ever broken - which, of course, after thirteen years, they are, when a mission goes horribly wrong. Believing his team dead, Kane escapes to Germany along with a fortune in diamonds.
Lynch, on the other hand, made his living in manual labour as a blue collar worker. A paranoid schizophrenic, he needs a number of medications to keep his mood swings under control. As a side note, “lynching” refers to the practice of a group of people violently taking the law into their own hands.
Let’s recap; a man working in a job which requires strength, with violent mood swings, reliant on medication to keep himself under control, with a name like Lynch? It’s obvious that this won’t end well.
After another series of events, Kane and Lynch meet while being transported to death row. They are kidnapped by the surviving members of The Seven, and Kane is ordered to carry out one last mission. Lynch acts as his guard on behalf of The Seven, just to make sure he doesn’t run away again, and this is where the main part of the game begins.
To be perfectly honest, it seems pretty clichéd. You could find any given element of that plot in any number of other places, and the main characters are also pretty standard. It’s to be hoped that there are some twists in the plot, but with any luck, the gameplay and other elements will make up for it anyway.
Single and cooperative gameplay
So now let’s move on to the gameplay. Although both characters fight, you only play as Kane, with Lynch being AI controlled. Cooperative games, with a second player controlling Lynch, are possible. Although there is an online multiplayer mode, this kind of cooperative playing is limited to offline games. It’s been revealed that the characters’ personalities play a part in how they fight. While Kane employs finesse, Lynch is more of a loose cannon, and is more liable to take risks.
This has the potential to become very annoying. I freely admit that I’m a controlling player, and without very good AI this method of combat has the potential to be extremely frustrating. However, it also has the potential to be challenging and engaging; it depends on the player’s own style, and how well IO Interactive have managed to carry out this objective.
There’s little information on how online play will work, although it’s known that it will be squad-based. The lack of a fully cooperative online mode seems almost a bit of a waste.
