[Multiplatform] Kane & Lynch: Dead Men

The Art of Fragile Alliance



Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is a dark and gritty tale of two men, one a flawed mercenary, the other a medicated psychopath, forced to embark on a violent and chaotic journey, hating each other every step of the way.


Published by: Eidos Interactive
Developed by: Io Interactive
Genre: Action
MSRP: $59.99
Players: 1 - 2 (Co-op); 2 - 8 (Online Multiplayer)
NA Release Date: November 14, 2007
EU Release Date: November 23, 2007
AU Release Date: December 6, 2007
Game Rating: M (Mature) - Blood, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Strong Language
Available for: PC, PlayStation 3, Wireless Phone, Xbox 360
PC Recommended Requirements:
Intel Pentium 4 (2.5GHz) or AMD Athlon XP 2400+
Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista
1GB RAM with 128 MB NVIDIA 6600 or ATI X1300
7 GB of free space, Requires Live for Windows subscription for online features.




Real name: Adam Marcus
Mark of Identification: Scar on the forehead
Prologue: Originally worked as a consultant, Adam’s relatively normal life takes a turn when his two-year-old son finds his gun and kills himself with it. Being blamed by his wife for the death of their son, Adam leaves the country. He becomes a mercenary under the alias Kane, and after six years of putting his acquired skills to good work, he is contacted by a mysterious group known only as The 7. They promise him riches which also come with strict rules. If those rules are ever broken, Kane is a dead man. After thirteen years of working under The 7, a flawless job in the US goes horribly wrong. Kane manages to escape to Germany with a fortune, but his entire team presumably ends up dead. Arrested in California last year based on an anonymous phone tip, Kane is linked with 25 deaths in Venezuela, of which he is later convicted and sentenced to death.




Real name: Lynch
Mark of Identification: Unknown (as of yet)
Prologue: No one knows for sure how Lynch comes into the scene. Lynch is a paranoid schizophrenic who made a blue collar living in manual labor. He needs a large amount of prescription pills to keep his volatile nature under control. Lynch ends up on death row after one of his 'blackouts' resulted in the brutal murder of his wife. Lynch calls 911 reporting the death of his wife, but the evidence at the crime scene shows that Lynch himself was the murderer. Lynch goes on a run, but is finally caught and sentenced to death.



Kane & Lynch: Dead Man features Kane, a flawed mercenary and Lynch, a medicated psychopath in a highly volatile alliance. A new breed of action in a brutal tale of loyalty, loss and revenge, the player is left open with Intense, hard-edged action gameplay. K&L also features explosive squad-based combat with intuitive squad control (optional). The game also features offline co-op mode, where you and your partner-in-crime can play as both Kane and Lynch. Aside from single player and co-op modes offline, you can also take the intense battle online with a unique and innovative mode known as “Fragile Alliance”. According to IOI Test Department, “Play it like a soldier and you’ll lose. Play it like a criminal and you’ll win...”

The mobile version of Kane and Lynch takes the gritty essence and combines it with innovative design to create a unique game for mobile handsets - IO have worked closely with the developer - to make sure the game offers a true Kane and lynch experience to gamers on all platforms. Players can experience 38 adrenaline filled levels and encounter 5 gripping scenarios. Players must face serious challenges on their way through the twisted world of Kane & Lynch using an arsenal of weapons, explosives and gadgets combined with visually stunning graphics, particle effect explosions and distinctive level design.


How to win: Escape with the most cash after your chosen number of heists (3-10)
Loyalty: Sometimes it pays off. Players in the alliance share the money equally between them.
Betrayal: If you kill another player, you are out of the alliance and marked a Traitor.

Upside to being a Traitor: You don’t have to share with anybody and you have a chance of getting away with more than all the other suckers.
Downsides to being a Traitor:
1. The Revenge-Reward: Getting out won’t be easier. The player you killed respawns as a Kevlar-clad policeman with a hefty reward on your head.
2. The Traitor-Reward: The remaining alliance members are free to kill you – they even get a reward for it.
3. Visible Gamer Tag: Your head tag will shine orange and be visible through walls – everybody will be have an easy time homing in on you.
4. Visible Gamer Tag: In the next round, you will spawn slightly to the side – wearing a black shirt – just to warn people about your tendencies.

Being Police: When you get killed the first time, you respawn as police. If you get killed again, you’re out for the rest of the round.
Upsides to Being Police:
1. You still have an excellent chance of winning the round.
2. You still have an excellent chance of winning the round. Not only can you collect Rewards, but you can also hinder the alliance to get away with the cash.
3. On top of that you can pick up any cash that is dropped by the alliance during the heist – and get an instant finder’s fee. Tax-free of course!


Downsides to Being Rich:
Your head tag will show how much cash you’re carrying – so you’re a prime target. Get used to it, and think before you pick up $ 1 million in front of a bunch of poor suckers.
Upside to Being Rich: Money Shields. When shot at, the money works as a shield. You can take more shots but the money will drop from you when it happens. You can either run and die poor – or stand and fight and pick up the cash again.
Being poor downside: Nobody wants to share their score with you – watch your back!
Crouching hides your head tag: When in the alliance you can hide your gamer tag by crouching. So you can pick up $1 million and try and sneak off with it – or you can creep up on traitors waiting to ambush you.
Drop Money: You can choose to drop money to lower the reason to kill you, or to use it as bait for an ambush.

Get out: Run to the extraction point and your getaway vehicle will arrive. Do you dare to take it, with the risk of somebody blowing it up? You can’t wait forever you know. After 200 seconds, the round closes down and you get nothing!
Weapon Packs: Risk your hard earned money to buy weapon packs. It might be worth it.
Balaclava: The higher the placement in the game – the darker the balaclava – making it easy to figure out who you want to keep an eye on.
Character: The higher TrueSkill rank you have – the cooler character you’ll play with.
Quite exclusively: Number 1 in the world will play as Kane. Number 2 as Lynch.























Show Floor Trailer

X06 Trailer

German Trailer

Lynch Trailer

E3 2007 Sony Press Conference Trailer

GT Exclusive Trailer

The Escape

Insider #1

Insider #2



"...it's the best emulation of being in the midst of a Michael Mann movie we've ever seen." - Gamespy

"A mercenary, a psychopath & a bundle of cash... What could go wrong?" – Game Informer

IGN.COM:
Final Preview - November 2, 2007 -- Being evil isn't always a bad thing.
IGN Australia Impressions - October 8, 2007 -- We play through the first couple of hours.
Multiplayer Hands On - October 5, 2007 -- Treachery, deviousness and double-crossing: we get stuck into IO's unique 'Fragile Alliance' multiplayer mode.

GAMESPOT.COM
Kane & Lynch: Dead Men Hands-On - October 22, 2007 -- We play through a couple of previously unseen campaign levels on the PC and the PlayStation 3.
Fragile Alliance Hands On - Oct 8, 2007 -- We explore the backstabbing, double-crossing world Kane & Lynch promises to provide online.

1UP.COM
Dead Man: Mini Preview - October 26, 2007 -- We take one last look before review time.
Multiplayer Preview - October 8, 2007 -- Splitscreen co-op and versus MP hands-on.





Best known for his edgy electronic and epic choral/orchestral scores for the multi-million selling Hitman series, Jesper Kyd’s unique fusion of cinematic scoring techniques and minimalist electronic music for Hitman: Contracts won Best Original Music at the BAFTA Games Awards and his stylish hybrid score for Hitman: Blood Money was awarded Best Original Score by IGN and nominated for Best Original Video Game Score at the MTV Video Music Awards. His other collaborations with IO Interactive include Hitman: Codename 47, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and Freedom Fighters, which received GameSpot’s Special Achievement Award for Best Original Music. For more information on Jesper Kyd, visit Jesper Kyd's official website.


Viral - Sissy: A clip featuring a conversation between Kane & Lynch in an elevator.
Viral - Peterstack7.com: Peter Stack, a journalist who devoted his career to tracking The 7.
Viral - Lynch calling 911 (Audio): An audio excerpt of Lynch calling 911 after finding his wife dead.
Viral - Kane Interview: Kane being interviewed by playboy magazine before his execution (part 1 of 2)
Viral - Kane Interview: Kane being interviewed by playboy magazine (part 2 of 2)

KaneandLynch.com: The official website of the game.
Kane & Lynch Mobile: The official website of the mobile version of "Kane & Lynch: Dead Men".
Fragile Alliance PDF: A PDF explaining how Fragile Alliance works.
Kane & Lynch Inside: Fansite dedicated to the life of Kane & Lynch, and the home to 'K&L Comics'

Blatantly stolen from shagg_187 at NeoGAF who compiled all this.
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Basically it's "Michael Mann: The Videogame" given that the game is heavily inspired by past and present Mann films, specifically Heat and a little bit of Collateral. Kane & Lynch first caught my eye on the cover of the last issue of Game Informer and some of the information and screens were pretty impressive and had me interested.



The gameplay is supposed to be pretty similiar to Hitman and IO's tactical shooter Freedom Fightersd with the player taking control of Kane while Lynch can either by controlled by the game or a second player can jump in and take control of him for some Co-Op action. Some missions will also feature not only Lynch accompanying you but also other mercenaries which means the game shifts towards being a little more tactical, ala Freedom Fighters as mentioned before.

GameSpot had a preview of the title a couple of days ago and some more juicy info:
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/kan...e=1&sid=6156372

Quote:

Kane was required to infiltrate a Tokyo nightclub and kidnap the daughter of a powerful Yakuza boss, but Lynch was kept in the dark about the mission until moments before he was told to throw the unconscious woman over his shoulder and follow Kane out of the club.

The nightclub interior was reminiscent of similar locales in Hitman: Blood Money, but with a much more crowded dance floor, and it had some superb disco lighting that pulsated in time with the music that was playing. The music in the version of the game that we saw, incidentally, was a track from the Chemical Brothers, but in the finished game, the club will play original music on all three of its dance floors.

Remember that Collateral reference?

Quote:

The other level that we saw during our demo started on top of a Tokyo skyscraper, where Kane, Lynch, and two accomplices were disguised as window cleaners. Their mission on this occasion was to retrieve a briefcase from a boardroom, which we watched them do by rappelling down to the correct floor, placing a bomb by the window, and then doing battle with a dozen or so security guards in an impressively destructible environment. The portion of the mission that we saw looked like it was a lot of fun to play, but more than that, it served to show off a number of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men's features that we weren't previously aware of. You don't get any kind of health bar in the game, for example, but you'll know when you're close to death because the screen starts to turn red and the third-person camera skews at an awkward angle. You'll regain health slowly simply by avoiding enemy fire for a period of time, though we're not certain if first-aid kits or similar appear in the game. What we do know is that when you die (or have a near-death experience, at least), you'll be treated to snapshots of Kane's life flashing before his eyes, which is surely one of the most ingenious ways to tell a character's backstory that we've ever seen. We also know that characters in your group who are taken down can be brought back to life if an adrenaline shot is administered quickly enough, and your relationship with your colleagues will determine whether or not they try to save you in that situation

Something GI mentioned about the nightclub was how whenever the music changed the dancers would dance accordingly to whatever style of music was playing in the club.

After GameSpot's preview Kane & Lynch was shown behind closed doors at this week's Games Convention in Germany where somebody was able to capture some of the demo which features the nightclub and more:
Send big files the easy way. Files too large for email attachments? No problem!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

And here I was thinking one of the main character's name would've been Vincent. :lolsign:
I caught some preview clips of the game over at IGN at it looks like something I'd be interested in but since it's done by IO Interactive, I just hope the deceased rubber chicken movements are long gone. :eyebrow:

There's nowhere I can't reach.

This certainly looks interesting. I'm really intrigued by how the near death experience happens. I haven't played a Hitman game yet, I'd really like to.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

The website is up:

www.kaneandlynch.com

I downloaded the trailer on my Xbox 360 (the same one you can see on the site) and im getting pretty hyped about this game.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Long overdue bump. Seems the game went gold ahead of schedule and as such Eidos bumped up the release by a week which means Kane & Lynch gets out next week!

COD4, Kane & Lynch, Assassin's Creed and Uncharted....all in the space of 4 weeks. Awersome. Seriously pumped for this game though and while no online co-op is a bummer, the Fragile Alliance sounds good enough to keep me occupied.

I was speaking idiomatically.

The cool part is while it's a fragile alliance between them. Kane and Lynch need one annother in order to operate. Kane is the smart wuss and Lynch is the angry muscle. Without the other, one can't even begin to take on a heist whic is what makes this game interesting for me. A real Resevoir Dogs sort of vibe comes off this game for me. Can't wait.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I'm surprised that no one has reported on this game yet. I picked it up today, and it's about what I expected.

The story is great, the characters are well done, and the gameplay is fun. Though the cover system is a bit hit or miss at times.

This game starts off as a basic and griddy 3PS, but ends up taking story twists and gameplay mechanics that leave you with a "whoa, cool..." moment from time to time. I haven't beaten it yet, but anyone into Resevoir Dogs, Heist ot thoes types of movies have GOT to check out these two crazy, nasty, hate inspiring characters in action, because they'll take you for a ride that's at least just as entertaining as the previously mentioned movies.

FELIPE NO

Yes jesper kyd cant wait to hear his score.

Most amazing jew boots

Well I picked it up on Thursday night but it's been kind of hard to tear myself away from COD4 online but I managed to play for a couple of hours today and it's been pretty solid overall.

Couple of gripes though comes with the aiming given that it could of done with a little more tightening up and the enemy AI is pretty much dumbshit stupid sometimes. That and the visuals...at least for the first couple of levels which look like a hi-res PS2 game on the system but by the Tokyo nightclub level the game seemed to look noticeably better especially the lighting, so why they'd have the ugliest looking levels to begin with is beyond me.

So, so far so good.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I pegged this as a kind of generic action game without the story or gameplay to back it up, but that multiplayer fragile alliance stuff looks pretty interesting, and seeing a bit more about the game has me more interested in the characters.

I still think Army of Two may have this one beat for pure fun gameplay, but then again Army of Two isn't out right now. ;_;

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Well the game is definately about the characters and working as a team. That and that whole mob/theif vibe to the game just makes it feel fresh in the worls of sci-fi and FPS games. I'm sure that not everyone will like this game, and the graphics are sub-par for this generation (though Kane & Lynch look far superior to everything else). I just really hope that this game does well enough to see the fully realized sequel I believe it deserves. Cause I'd buy it in a snap.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.