http://www.gameplayer.com.au/H...7f4042332099&v7Pager=1
As far as mercenaries with a mission go, Kane and Lynch are shaping up to be the best. They?re a pair of escaped criminals, as Neil Donnell, producer on the game explains: ?Kane?s misunderstood. He?s had a life as a mercenary? face has a few war signs? but we?d rather players discovered his back-story through the game.? We?d rather tell you that Kane was a mercenary working for The Seven, until a mission went tits-up. He fled to Venezuela, where the authorities nabbed him and sentenced him to death.
Lynch also ends up on Death Row. ?There was an accident with his wife,? says Donnell. ?Nobody really knows what happened, as he?s a schizophrenic, but he?s convicted of her murder. Sometimes his personality comes through in cutscenes, but if he?s pressured he?ll start to cave.? Their prison van is ambushed by The Seven, who negotiate a deal with the pair: Kane?s family get to live, if he?ll do one more job for them, with Lynch acting as their watchdog; when the job?s done, Kane dies.
?We?re trying to stay away from the dark humour of the Hitman series,? says Donnell. ?The subject matter here is even darker.? We?ll say. From the excellent nightclub level where Lynch interrupts an argument by punching out a middle-aged lady, to Kane?s brutal (and unexplained) mutilation of an old associate?s corpse, there?s content in here that could easily rate a MA15+.
Donnell walks us through the amazing nightclub scene with its 5,000 dancers (we?ve seen it before but it?s still impressive) then we get hands-on with a reworked version of the Attack of the Window Cleaners. Our team of mercenaries (dressed as, yep, window cleaners) clear a rooftop helipad using the intuitive team control and weapon systems, then rappel down the side of an office block to blow open a meeting room. It feels very similar to Hitman in terms of responsiveness and there?s obviously a shared engine, with all the idiosyncrasies that brings.
Finally, we get hands-on with an all-new scene. Exiting the office block after a massacre, we change into civilian outfits and mingle with the fleeing crowd. As this fails, we end up fighting our way through the city streets against cops and SWAT teams so our pick-up guy can spirit us away. At this point, our top-end mercenaries are really helping ? they improve in quality throughout and here they?re pretty much the best we could get.
The momentum of the story is paramount ? even the loading screens continue the plot. Going down in the lift from the office massacre, we hear the team arguing about changing into their business suits so they can escape anonymously from the office block. Donnell explains: ?The idea with Kane & Lynch is to have one constant narrative; we want people to be hooked into the story and dragged along.?
Multi-player is substantial. In split-screen co-op mode, one person controls Kane, the other Lynch. ?In single-player, you?ll just witness Lynch?s behaviour,? says Donnell. ?In co-op, the second player gets to play out some of his more delusional episodes.? How sensitively will IO portray Lynch?s mental illness? We?re hoping for full-on hallucinations? As for PVP, Donnell confirmed its existence, though he couldn?t tell us how it would work. ?We?ve got plans for doing downloadable content that are absolutely blockbuster? And we?d like to support multiplayer with new maps.? The team aren?t ready to reveal their Achievements, though they have suitably mean ideas.
So, any chance of crossovers with Eidos?s and IO?s other franchises? ?Well, observant Hitman: Blood Money players will have noticed the references in the newspapers to Kane & Lynch. It?s a case of whether if the fans would be interested if we did that? whether the ideas are strong enough. It can?t be gimmicky. But I?d like to play a Hitman Versus Kane & Lynch!?
Overall, there?s a really cinematic feel to the game, though not quite at the same level as Fahrenheit, and we?re hoping the eight hours of gameplay will all be as frenetic and involving as this. Roll on, November!
for new info on IGN 
Facebook
Twitter