Kane & Lynch Say, Screw Over Your Friends
Eidos have marched in, thinking Orangeboxday is an appropriate time for announcing a new multiplayer element for their forthcoming Kane & Lynch.
And it sounds potentially rather fun. Because you get to stab your friends in the back.
It's to begin as a co-op scenario, with up to eight of you teamed up against the cops, performing heists. Which already sounds a decent amount of fun, but gets more interesting. Your group objective is to steal whatever you're stealing, and make it to your getaway point. Except, there are winners and losers here, and the winner is the one who escapes with the most. I.e. the one who turns on the others most effectively. As their exciteable press release says, "How and when you make your move is up to you."
Lead Game Designer Kim Krogh puts it like this,
“Fragile Alliance is a new way to use co-op in multiplayer. Play it like a soldier and you’ll lose, play it like a criminal and you’ll win”.
So it's essentially a multiplayer game based around everyone preparing to backstab everyone else. If the dynamics are right, and it forces you to work together just enough before hell breaks loose, it could be huge amounts of fun.