Steady your stomach, 360 owners, because the sequel to 2007’s Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is about to give your stash of Dramamine a serious workout. No joke.

Cribbing notes from the YouTube generation of cellphone-camera videographers, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days isn’t content to simply rehash the original’s nuanced-but-straightforward crime caper. Instead, the violent duo’s second outing is made much more personal and frantic through the use of a shaky-cam approach to its storytelling and visuals.

But first, a little background. Your two antihero protagonists, Kane and Lynch, may qualify as dangerous criminals, but they’re each uniquely larcenous. Kane, the main guy in the first game, has ex-mercenary training under his belt. Lynch, Dog Days’ primary focus, doesn’t. A pure psycho who — with a little help of the prescription kind — keeps his killer tendencies at bay, Lynch settles down with a ladyfriend and a henchman job in Shanghai. But crime is as crime does, and only a few years after the events of Dead Men, the pair finds themselves neck-deep in an underworld blowout after Lynch coaxes Kane back into thug life with just one…more…job.

Narratively, Dog Days spans a mere 48 hours. From the minute the two join up in Shanghai, the you-know-what starts hitting the fan. But developer Io is hesitant to go into juicy details about exactly what takes place — other than a whole lotta death and destruction. Our eyes-on time with the game proved that. Which brings us back to the whole shaky-cam thing…

Shot as if the whole game was being viewed through a handheld lens, visuals are grainy, gritty, artifacted, and unsteady right from the start. As Lynch (a buddy will be able to join you as co-op–able Kane over Live), your approach is headfirst. Plunging into a gunfight about a third of the way through the game, Lynch dodged bullets from one cover spot to the next in a restaurant, with our demo showcasing the documentary-style approach as the camera lurched behind him. Under fire, you’re able to cling to wall corners as protection or vault from cover to cover. Environmental objects crumble with each shotgun blast, while the stream of bad guys duck and juke your return fire to ratchet up the tension and tactics.

If you get caught in the crossfire — and you will get caught — you’ll be knocked down to the ground. But you’re not down for the count. Instead, Dog Days sports a new feature called “Down, But Not Dead.” This means you’ll have a chance to crawl to cover to regain health and then enter the fight anew. You won’t bleed out as in, say, Gears of War, but while you’re crawling, you’d better crawl fast — if enemies continue pelting you with lead, you will die. On the flip side, opponents will have the same option. If you shoot an enemy enough to knock them down but not kill them, you’d better be ready for them to eventually pop right back up, zombie-style.

And for those who rocked the pair’s initial outing in Dead Men, Io also has this bit of great news: the ingenious Fragile Alliance multiplayer mode is returning for Dog Days with plenty of new modes, maps, and features. As a refresher, it works off of this basic premise: you and your online pals start off as an alliance of criminals aiming to make off with a load of cash. You’ll have to fight your way through a bevy of SWAT officers to nab the money and make it to the getaway van before time is up. But that’s not necessarily the entire goal. You can also kill your friends and take their cash for a bigger share of the booty. If you do, though, you’re branded a traitor and flagged on everyone’s mini-maps, and a cash bonus is put on your head as bounty for the player able to hunt you down. The result is a giddy, interactive bank-heist- gone-wrong scenario that struck a chord with turncoat gamers, and we welcome its return for the sequel. We have a box of Dramamine at the ready.