Review: Shank 2

I liked Shank. I liked it a lot, and gave it the fantastically likeable grade of “A” long before any other fancy larger site decided to be smart like me and adopt a grade system for their reviews. I praised Shank for it’s graphic novel inspired visuals and for feeling like you were playing through an interactive comic book. But most of all I praised the game for it’s vicious sidescrolling combat that had an equally vicious learning curve of difficulty. Shank was pitiless when it came to handing out ass whoopings, and some of that was because the game didn’t do a superb job of explaining how you could destroy your opponents with ease.

Shank 2 teaches you how to kick this guy in the junk better than ever before.

Shank 2 is upon us, and we’ve had an opportunity to see how this now-franchise is faring the second time around, and thankfully everything that made the first game great is back and has been honed to a fine edge in terms of quality. But if there is one thing that stands a cut above the rest it’s the art style that made Shank so special. It has improved by leaps and bounds, and should be lavished with praise. Characters, environments, items, and most of all the cutscenes are dripping with a level of hand drawn detail in the game’s levels that I haven’t seen since Disney still made animated movies. The main difference of course, is the gargantuan amounts of violence in Shank 2, all laboriously produced by hand. It’s wonderful.

Also wonderful are the numerous tweaks that Klei have made to the core combat in an effort to make Shank 2 more engaging and intuitive than the first game. The most noticeable of these tweaks is the onscreen instructional prompts that now appear in the corner of the screen whenever the game wants to teach you a new way to fight, or feels you need help. It does a better job of filling the difficulty gap that the first game left open by using these prompts, and so they tend to be effective and helpful overall. But toward the end of the game when you’ve come to grips with just about every mechanic present in the game, and the prompts are still popping up in the middle of intense battles for your life, it can be a bit overbearing. But the heart is in the right place so again, it’s hard to fault something that’s trying to be a friend to you in your time of getting stabbed in the face.

You notice the sign says "Beware of Death"? I don't think that guy did! BOOSH!

Shank 2′s also touched up the fighting in such a way that everything feels more fluid and natural than before. I found it much easier to take on groups of enemies than the first game just because Shank 2 has added little transitions and flourishes to connect my combos that weren’t there before. The most notable of these is the new roll and dodge mechanic activated simply by flicking the right analog stick in either direction. It’s fairly intuitive and works about 90 percent of the time, and you can even reliably pull off the dodge in mid air thanks to the simplicity of the setup. The other combat tweak that I really noticed was when you have an enemy behind you. Before it seemed like Shank would almost always have to turn completely around, or just dodge out of the way in order to deal with an enemy behind him. Now with a simple flick of the analog stick, and some quick combo work Shank will first use a backward kick, or flourish to connect with the enemy then turn around to fully transition into the combo.

And the combos are what really matter here, as they make Shank feel less like a stock sidescrolling character, and more like a deadly ballet dancer. Just try using nothing but guns or throwing knives, and you’ll see what I mean. The character still moves very much like poetry in motion, and makes it incredibly easy to flow in and out of weapon transitions, and different moves within combos. And some of my favorite combos have come back packing new punch… You can still pop enemies into the air and juggle them with your pistols, but you can also pop a guy into the air and fill him with enough knives to make pincushion jealous. You can still grapple guys at any time during a combo, but now you can also do timed counterattacks that result in some pretty graphic executions. You also have a few new tricks up your sleeve, like the ability to grapple heavies and slam them around like ragdolls, or shove a chainsaw in their guts and hold the button down to really grind it in there…, there’s also some cool new weapons in the form of molotovs, mines, and a really big sledgehammer. For a brief level you also get to play as a new character who wields her scythe, and Uzi with some serious style. She even dodges out of the way with a style reserved for gymnasts, by forward and backflipping in place of Shank’s Judo roll.

When quicktime events are cartoons I like them. I dunno. Sue me.

All in all I like Shank 2 as much as I liked the first game, if not a little more. There’s definitely more meat on the bone this time around, and Klei has done a remarkable job of addressing every single weakness of the first game, and correcting them in dramatic and meaningful ways that add genuine value and enjoyment to Shank 2. Once you’re past those considerations it’s simply the game itself, and even in that regard Shank 2 is still terrific. With plenty of unlockables, couch co-op and the obligatory leaderboards you could easily lose yourself in this slick downloadable more than you may expect to.

But ya know what’s truly the best part of Shank 2? The game is only 10 dollars.

Shank 2 is available now for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360
It was developed by Klei Entertainment, and published by EA