Get Shank Its a Good Thing

Shank is such a cool word with many cool meanings. Shank could be a cut of meat or the acting of stabbing someone with a homemade knife and now a Video Game.

Made by Klei I have been waiting for this downloadable PSN game for months now. It’s a 2D side scrolling Shinobi type action game crossed with the beat’em up combat style of Streets of Rage, only with a robust combo system. Lots of violence and seriously crass language make this a mature title that action junkies crave. Sounds too good to be true, lets investigate.

The 1st thing that pops out at you is the art style. The game is super cartooned out, I am talking cartoon network style but with mature content, so its more like adult swim. Each character and enemy have distinctive  and smooth animations that work incredible well with the theme of Shank. Lots of blood, bright colors and even the facial expressions are standouts in this stylized game. If Robert Rodriguez made a video game Shank would be it. The most standout feature in the style is the picture in picture cut scene when you are engaging in actual gameplay, it just pops up, audio and all while you are kick the shit out of some henchmen. The only problem, trying to pay attention and playing at the same time.(a good problem to have)

The voice acting is top notch as well as the narrative. I have only played the single player storymode and it was action packed. You play as Shank, your girl gets kidnapped, tortured and raped, needless to say its revenge time.

Like I stated earlier its 2-D and the game works well. It mixes traditional action beat em up gameplay with unique style and a combo system that makes sense for once. You can shoot arms, use a host of awesome weapons for both melee attacks and heavy attacks, grapple and pounce(personal favorite.) You can cycle through your weapons while using them in combo’s as well, and some of the weapons include a shank, chainsaw, machete, a chain, katana, uzi, 2 glocks, shotgun and grenades. The grapple and pounce actions go even further by letting you choose a host of actions including chain-sawing someone’s stomach in or choking someone out with chains after grabbing or pouncing on someone.

Shank is like a midnight grindhouse flick come to life, unfortunately it plays like one as well. Disclaimer: I have no real problems with the gameplay, I am just being critical. OK now that’s out of the way the gameplay will piss you off at times. The block and dodge features put you way out of position at times and midway through all the madness of combat you will lose sight of your character. Luckily the game is good about giving out health power ups which are extremely necessary at time.

The Boss battles are great, but can be long at times. Long because you have to wait for a certain action to cause any type of significant damage, but again I am being hyper critical.

The stand out worst feature has to be the no online co-op mode. There is a co-op mode but you cant play online, there has to be someone there with you physically, wtf? Apparently there is a stand alone storyline for 2 player mode as well as the single player story, too bad I will not get to play the 2 player story mode cause my girlfriend would rather watch house hunters than stuff a grenade in someones mouth and blow up their face( you can ACTUALLY do that in Shank!!)

All in all Shank has everything I like in a video game, amazing style, awesome soundtrack (which was available on their site for free), blood, great story, on point dialogue and a whole lotta violence. The minor things will not hurt the general feel of this over the top fun action title.

4 Bloody Shanks

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