E3 Hands-On: Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days - Preview
by Daniel Share-Strom , posted on 17 June 2010 / 2,480 Views
During our Square Enix booth tour, we were able to get our hands on the multiplayer mode of Kane & Lynch 2, playing the Fragile Alliance game mode on a map called Financial.
Like the first game, the game takes a third-person perspective, and places an emphasis on taking cover and tactics. Fragile Alliance pits six cops against six criminals. Taking on the role of hired guns, we were hired by a man named Glazer to eliminate another criminal team who had just robbed a bank and steal their take. Teamwork is necessary in this mode to make it out alive, but there is a catch--you are actively encouraged to kill your teammates and take a larger cut. However, doing this puts a bounty on your head and all the other players will be gunning for you. This adds an element of strategy as the player tries to find the best moment to take advantage of the situation. If you are killed, you become a cop and must stop them from getting away.
The strange mechanic of working together while plotting against each other was hard to grasp at first, and we pretty much went around killing each other randomly for a few rounds. However, once we got used to it, we got into a groove with our team and the game had a very unique flow to it. Unfortunately, we probably wouldn't make it in the criminal world, as we came in last place, but we were able to get in a few decent kills using the 'Down but not Dead' feature, which lets you fire a few extra shots before bleeding out.
The map we played on, Financial, was set in Shanghai, in (as you can imagine) a financial district. There were plenty of buildings to duck in and out of, stairs to climb, and little doodads all over the place to take cover behind--not to mention the canisters that could be tossed and shot for a nice explosive payoff. Unfortunately, we did get stuck in a couple of glitches that didn't let us move from our cover for a few seconds, so hopefully those get ironed out before release.
That about wraps up our life as a member of a bank heist--it may have ended badly for us, but Square and Eidos have a promising multiplayer game coming up.
My colleague Julio Machuca had a chance to play the single player, but we were barely given time to play it due to our Square Enix booth tour being very strained on time. The demo opened up right in the middle of a gun fight in which Kane and Lynch were doing what they always do: battling an assortment of thugs in what appeared to be a bar map. Once again, using your environment to your advantage by utilizing walls and tables as cover. We died a few times, and that was the end of the demo for us. We hope to have more information regarding Kane and Lynch 2 in the coming months.
