Kane & Lynch: Dead Men
- August 24, 2006 07:37 AM PST
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Eidos and IO flip the script on the cop-buddy storyline. Here are our initial impressions
Kane and Lynch are on top of the tallest high-rise in Tokyo. Their mission is relatively straightforward. They are to pretend to be window washers. They--meaning you--will rappel down this skyscraper to the desired level, plant an explosive, and assassinate a crew of hired guards in order to gain access to one man's briefcase.
Huh? What? Who's Kane? Who's Lynch? I guess we'll have to start at the beginning ...
Kane, meet Lynch. Lynch, meet Kane
Kane used to be an honest man. The ex-soldier was living the American Dream--pretty wife, beautiful family, nice house, and so on. Then his son accidentally shot himself with Kane's own service revolver, throwing the American Dream into turmoil. Having lost his family as a result of his inability to cope, Kane becomes a mercenary, working primarily with an outfit known as "The Seven". But even this goes wrong. When a certain mission goes sour, Kane ends up in jail ... on Death Row. That's where he meets ...
The spectacular skyline puts Spider-Man games to shame
Lynch, on the other hand, was never a soldier. He was the office type, and his entry point into the story is an unfortunate byproduct of a schizophrenic break. Hey, it happens. Unfortunately, in the process of losing his sanity, he wakes up one morning to find his wife dead--as in murdered. With no memory of the previous night's events and a mountain of forensic evidence pointing squarely at him, Lynch is found guilty and sentenced to Death Row.
Fortunately for both guys, their stay on Death Row is brief. While being moved from one prison to another, their transport gets hit by a massive truck. Armed men pull both Kane & Lynch from the wreckage, and the leader of The Seven throws a no-choice proposition into Kane's face. Either he helps them recover a massive stash of diamonds, or the bad(der) guys kill his wife and daughter.
This unlikely pairing--cold-blooded mercenary meets schizo wacko--is the initial set up for Kane & Lynch. While the premise sounds interesting in a Fugitive meets 48 Hours kind of way, the ambitions of IO (responsible for Hitman and Freedom Fighters) have us excited with expectation. One of the stated goals of the game is to "create an experience that is both computer game and story." Easier said than done, right?
Recently, Eidos invited an exclusive cadre of websites, magazines, and writers to their San Francisco offices to get a first-hand look at the game. Here's what I saw.
"What are you looking at, giant shadow?"
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