Lynch mob

Trust no one in Kane & Lynch: Dead Men's excellent multiplayer mode on PlayStation 3.

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is the hotly anticipated co-operative action game from IO Interactive - creators of the brilliant Hitman series. Taking control of Kane, a former mercenary sentenced to death, players team up with Lynch, a medicated psychopath, to retrieve a haul of stolen money for a mysterious group known only as The Seven.

In addition to an already impressive single-player mode, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men features an innovative online multiplayer mode that will have you questioning who your friends really are come the game's release in November 2007.

Money in the bank

Kane & Lynch: Fragile Alliance, as the team-based online mode is known, is a very different type of multiplayer experience. Up to eight players can play together, and everyone initially starts out on the same team, with the aim of breaking into a bank, and making off with as much loot as possible. Players will have to work together to gain access to the bank, as it's heavily guarded by teams of computer-controlled police.

Once inside the vault, however, it's up to you how you want to play the game. Sticking with your team and escaping nets you an equal share of the cash, but an equal share just isn't going to cut it if you want to top the leaderboard and walk away victorious. So, you can kill everyone and pocket their cash to stand a chance of escaping the level with a much higher amount of money than everyone else, but turning traitor has some serious downsides as well.

Take out a member of your team and your head tag will start to shine orange, marking you out as a traitor with a sign that is clearly visible, even through walls. The remaining alliance members are also now free to kill you, and will pick up a cool reward for doing so. The player you killed will respawn as a Kevlar-clad policeman with a hefty grudge, and you start the next round wearing a black shirt and standing apart from the rest of your team to warn people about your tendencies.

Traitor's gate

So, the risks are high. But so are the rewards, and the more cash you are carrying, the more damage you can take thanks to Fragile Alliance's Money Shield system. You can even leave piles of money lying around as bait to draw unsuspecting victims into your line of fire.

Players who are killed respawn as police, but this doesn't mean that they are out of the running to win the round. Playing as police still affords you a great opportunity to win by picking up rewards for taking out alliance members, and stopping the ones with the cash from making a getaway. On top of that, you're able to pick up any loot dropped by the alliance as they flee, for which you'll get an instant, tax-free finder's fee.

Each round only last 200 seconds, so you'll have to be quick with your decisions and make it to the extraction point in time to be able to escape with your haul. It's easy to spot the players to keep an eye on as well - the higher your placement in the game, the darker your balaclava mask will be, and the number one and two ranked players in the world will get to play as Kane & Lynch respectively.

Fragile Alliance brings a fresh new twist to online multiplayer, that combines frantic run-and-gun action with a genuine atmosphere of paranoia and betrayal where trusting your teammates could be the last mistake you ever make.

Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is out in November 2007. Keep checking eu.playstation.com for a full preview, coming soon.