Kotaku
Io Interactive and Eidos had the Xbox 360 and PC versions of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men on the Games Convention show floor, finally giving us an opportunity to go hands-on with the third person shooter that's heavy on style and Michael Mann cinematic allusions. Two scenes from from the game were on hand, one that started on the rooftops of Remotomo Plaza and the ensuing Tokyo street firefight that awaits your team upon your exit. Kane & Lynch has been on my personal watch list following a preview at E3 '06, in which the duo extracts a target from a Japanese night club, a scene highly reminiscent in look and feel of Mann's Collateral.
The skyscraper level starts with Kane, Lynch and second pair of equally leery characters in coveralls taking out a security group on a rooftop helipad. Following that, the group rappels down the side of the corporate tower, plants an explosive charge on the bulletproof glass, then proceeds to wipe out the Japanese business types of ill repute gathered around a table, against one of whom Kane has a personal vendetta.
The shooting is frantic and shows off the game's destructible architecture, giving one flashbacks to both The Matrix and Die Hard for its bullet play and choice of settings. In between the action, and at some points during, you'll hear bits of dialog bandied about between the two titular "dead men" shedding light on the duo's current situation. There's a bit too much "adult language" with a seemingly constant stream of fucks and shits punctuating their speech.
Where Kane & Lynch appears to be more successful is in giving the player an impression of their personalities via their actions. Following the siege on the meeting room, Kane takes time to not only secure the prized briefcase they've come to collect, but to provide its holder with a knife wound running from brow to eye to cheek, mirroring his own facial scar. Lynch's publicized cold-blooded killer attitude doesn't come through in the Games Convention demo, but I suspect that the final game will feature that in spades.
Personally, I found the line "I repay my debts.... to the penny", delivered as the group leaves the corpse ridden room into the next, to show how cold and calculating Kane and Lynch will ultimately be.
While Kane & Lynch's action and controls may be playing catch up to some of its peers, the game has a style that's hard to ignore. It's light on tactics, heavy on gunplay and oozing with charisma. Everything is brightly lit and the levels we've seen feature clean geometry, with the Tokyo police shootout echoing Mann's Heat with its ammo filled face-off.
Even though my skills didn't do me much good in the chaotic street fight, leading to many deaths and drug-fueled reincarnations, I still had a great time. While Kane & Lynch: Dead Man looks a little rough around the edges in its current state, it's still a solid game and may wind up being one of those titles that succeeds on merits that are hard to quantify.
