When we first saw and heard about Kane & Lynch, it was a game from Eidos that had plenty of potential. But like so many other releases this year - Assassin’s Creed, Boogie, and Heavenly Sword to name a few - Kane & Lynch falls flat on its face and fails to live up to its potential in almost every regard.
The game’s biggest highlight is a fantastic, well-written story. You play as Kane, a cold-hearted mercenary and a member of the group known as The7. However, when a mission in Venezuela goes bad, Kane is presumed the lone survivor and is sentenced to death for his crimes. While in transport to death row, he’s told to duck by a fellow inmate, seconds before the prison convoy is attacked and Kane is sprung.
Turns out the fellow inmate is a psychotic fellow by the name of Lynch, and he’s working for The7. They’re pissed that Kane left them for dead, and they’re going to make Kane pay with his life, but not without performing one last job for them, with Lynch serving as something of a guardian to make sure Kane stays in line. If he succeeds, his wife and daughter live. If he doesn’t, they die. Either way, Kane dies.
And so the story unfolds over a series of missions and heists, with Kane not only needing to watch his own back, but also keeping an eye on Lynch, who is prone to psychotic break downs that throw a wrench into the best-laid plans. The story is well-paced and well-written, and Eidos would do good to hire these writers permanently.
Multiplayer also benefits from a unique mode called Fragile Alliance. In this mode, you play part of a crew pulling off a bank heist worth a certain amount. Make it out past the cops and you get a slice of the pie. However, you can turn on your teammates and kill them to try and make off with a bigger loot. The side effect of this is that your slain teammates come back as cops – who can proceed to thwart your heist – and that you’ll be marked to other teammates as a traitor. It can get repetitive, though, and good luck finding a game, because I doubt many people are jumping in to play Fragile Alliance.
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