Agent 47's best friends...

Eidos has moved away from their Hitman series (for the time being) to produce "Kane and Lynch: Dead men". Which proved to be a good move, because as it turns out, Kane and Lynch was an enjoyable experience.

The story in Kane and Lynch is very "Hollywood-esque" in that there's alot of great, scripted scenes. The story starts you off as Kane, a former mercenary on the bus to his execution when he meets Lynch. Lynch warns Kane to get down and suddenly all hell breaks loose. The bus is overturned and hooded thugs with automatic weapons begin to defend you and Lynch. After an intense shootout you're brought back to the headquarters of a group known as "The seven" where Kane is accused of being a traitor, he's given 24 hours to recover money he is accused of stealing or his family will be executed. Lynch is asked to tag along. To get the money back Kane and Lynch must pull off several heists.

Kane and Lynch are both great video game personalities. Kane is a man with that "nothing to lose" attitude. He will eliminate anyone who stands in his way and not think twice about it. He doesn't care about anyone else but himself and his family. There's no real other way to describe Lynch except a psycho. He will kill anyone and have no remorse, infact he'll probably enjoy it. Every other word that comes out of his mouth is a curse word. Both men never have anything nice to say and probably wouldn't bat an eyelash if the other man was killed.

You start off with just Kane and Lynch but later in the game you gather equally friendly henchmen. This is where the tactical part of the game begins to shine. It's executed great and you only really have 3 or 4 things you can tell them to do. The game also has a great "duck and cover" element. You've probably heard people preaching about how bad it is but it's actually very simple, you don't press a button to stick to a wall, instead you turn right or left to put your back to it. As complexed as this may seem, it works good and is very responsive, you rarely stick to cover when you don't want too.

The graphics are decent. Particularly the facial animations show alot of detail. Scars, cuts, bruises are all present and accounted for. The environments are also superb. One moment in particular I thought was great was a night club in Tokyo with lights flashing around and your firing at guards while literally hundreds of people are scrambling around screaming. There's also great moments in the jungles of Havana. Either way, they give a great sense of atmosphere.

The AI overall in the game are about as smart as the words that come out of their mouth. They almost never take cover, and instead, resort to hiding behind you in unorganized clumps. Not only that, but they'll make the most common mistake of all, charge right at a machine gun nest and other large groups of enemies despite the fact they're outnumbered...severely.

One annoying thing about Kane and Lynch is that as soon as one of your squadmates dies, the mission is over. Although you can revive them, it's very rare that you won't get cut down yourself. Kane and Lynch is one of the few games in recent memory where your squad can actually heal you when you die, so you don't always give up hope when you're put down. However since you're injected with adrenaline, you will overdose and die if you're injected too many times, too soon.

Kane and Lynch has a "hitman" feel. In that the enemies will squirm around instead of dying if you hit them in the right spot, and the weapons overall could of been swapped in either game. The rifles and machine guns never really manage to differ themselves all that much though, besides the sound, they all have recoil that's slightly more than you want.

Any movie buffs will notice serious similarities to some of the levels in the game. The game is definitely modeled after some Micheal Mann movies like the Tokyo night club scene (Collateral) and a shootout with the police after a bank robbery right in the middle of the street.

The multiplayer is one of the best I've played in recent memory. There's just a small, tiny problem with it. You can't get into any games, no biggie though. Seriously, you might manage to get into one or two matches here and there but for the most part you'll get an annoying error message. There's only one mode but it's seriously amazing. It's called "Fragile Alliance" and it features you and your team doing a heist of some sort. While fending off the police, you must also get as much money as you can. After a while though, you can choose to betray your team and kill other players ultimately stealing the money and making a break for it yourself. Of course the players next round probably won't be so generous and will be gunning for you, it's really fun. You can play the game co-op split screen, I don't know why they didn't choose to put it online because playing with a friend is very chaotic.

The audio is terrific. The two voice overs for Kane and Lynch do a terrific job. The music is very dark and moody, and all orchestral, much like the hitman series as well.

At the end of the day, Kane and Lynch is basically just another run of the mill third person shooter. If it wasn't for the great plot to motivate you through the game, I would tell you to pass. If you're a big hitman fan like me, you'll probably be disappointed by the linearity of the game, but the squad mechanics, great action sequences and multiplayer make it a worthy rental.