Kane and Lynch Multiplayer Preview

Again, the hand…

Again, there was a hand on my elbow. Thankfully, this time I didn’t accidentally get myself killed. In fact, I’d just run out of questions and was preparing to improve by showing Morton my utterly fantastic collection of stains on my cardigan, so maybe the hand on my elbow was a bit of a blessing.

I was guided back into the private showroom, leaving Morton to swelter his techy heart out by the pool, and was introduced to the singleplayer campaign of Kane and Lynch again.

I’d previously played the Xbox 360 version of the game only, so when I got back in the showroom I was anxious to try my hand at the other platforms and have a look at any differences there were. There was also a new level on show which I was told was “dramatically different to anything anybody has yet seen of the game”. I was sold.

I sat down at the PC first. Conveniently somebody else sat down next to me and started playing the PlayStation 3 version, so I was able to gauge rough differences in control and speed right off the bat.

The most obvious difference was the accuracy. Kane and Lynch plays with an over the shoulder camera and players can zoom in a bit to make shots more accurate. The enemies are unrealistically tough on the PC and I watched regular troopers take up to three headshots from my pistol before going down. On the PlayStation 3 however the troopers would go down with a lot less effort and the auto-aim kicked in a little bit to help players with the more fumbly control system. Rest assured that Kane and Lynch is a game which is well balanced for each system.


Moving onward in the PC, the improved accuracy meant I was able to race through certain scenes and of the game – shooting out car tyres, lobbing back grenades and using some incredibly brutal and fluidly animated melee combat. On the PS3 and Xbox 360 progress seemed slower and I was reminded how difficult it was to survive on the 360 multiplayer mode if somebody decided to shoot you in the back. Players simply can’t turn round fast enough to put up a fight.

When I got a chance to look at the new levels however I was a little shocked. Previous glimpses of the game had shown the violence to be mostly set in small urban areas – bank robberies, heists and other raids. The level I looked at then however wasn’t anything like that. I stole the controller from another journalist and took over the game on the PlayStation 3 version. I was somewhere in Venezuela on top of a roof top, shooting both tanks and helicopters with RPGs, before moving down to slay literally hundreds of troops.

It was a far cry from my earlier impressions of the game which had portrayed the idea of a true crime game – this was more akin to something you’d see in the frankly awful Scarface game and I was worried that it would clash with the rest of the game's ethics. Granted, I hadn’t played all the levels in between and so can’t really comment about whether or not the plot makes this abrupt change of pace appropriate or not. The difference in play-styles is so stark though that I struggle to think how the story could be altered to cope with the later levels I saw. It seemed like Kane and Lynch were attempting to stage their own coup!

Initial Thoughts

Kane and Lynch is shaping up to be a fantastic game, with an innovative (though perhaps a little too streamlined) multiplayer game, fantastic co-op and a talented and passionate team behind it. That much had been proved to me for the second time.


I do have concerns though. The last level which I played was of such stark contrast to the previous levels that I had some misgivings about the direction the consistently brilliant story had taken. Knowing that this level came at the end of the game didn’t help matters much either and made me think the game had an overly Hollywood-ised endings.

Interestingly, endings are something that IO Interactive has had trouble with in the past too. The original Hitman drew considerable scorn for changing pace abruptly in the latter stages, forcing Agent 47 to switch from a silent and stealthy figure of detached doom into a minigun toting symbol of freedom and self-hatred as he mowed down dozens of clones of himself.

However, comparing Hitman and Kane and Lynch shouldn’t reflect badly on either and, if anything, reflects well on IO’s new kid on the block. Kane and Lynch may possibly have a fly in the ointment regarding the latter part of the game, but if that’s all there is to worry about then it’s highly possible that we could have some game of the year material on our hands in the near future.

Kane and Lynch is available on Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3 on November 23rd. Until then though, you can always discuss it in the forums.