We've all long since stopped bemoaning the death of the side-scrolling beat-em-up, I think. The torch was passed to 3D spiritual successors like Devil May Cry and God of War, and outside of oddities like Castle Crashers and a crapload of flash games, the genre hasn't really shown its head in a while (and barely moved forward when it did). Then Shank comes along and reminds us all that hey, these things could have continued evolving down a completely different branch of the great cladistic tree of videogames, to become something completely new and every bit as kickass. Shank is bloody, violent, adolescently indulgent, and absolutely beautiful in execution (and in its executions.)
Two things absolutely
need to be understood if you're even a little bit on the fence about the
game: It's gorgeously, fluidly animated, in both its cut-scenes and
within the actual gameplay, and the game's controls are split-second
responsive even with the absurd amount of lovingly rendered action
happening on screen. Even better, all these obsessively detailed
eviscerations are animated in a style almost indistinguishable from
Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack, Star Wars: Clone Wars)
against a backdrop that's pure Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Desperado,
and the upcoming, and remarkably similarly titled Machete).
All that makes for one stratospherically anticipated game.
Shank doesn't disappoint. Slashing, dodging, pouncing, chainsawing,
blocking, grappling, dodging, and every other ability in the game uses
every button and button combination available on the controller, but
it's all so intuitive that it somehow never overwhelms you. Even better,
all of these options are strategically important. If the game has a
strong point, its in the gameplay itself. Some of the surrounding
tissue...well, that could have used a little more work.
Cut-scenes between levels are nothing short of gorgeous, but the
sound work is spotty in places, with more than a few cut-scenes where
sound effects are either absent or so softly mixed that I couldn't help
wondering if I had water in one ear. The voice acting is passable, and
features some excellent cheeseball one-liners ("I should call you
Lazarus." "And I should call you... F'd!") but on the whole, the
script seems like it was written to impress a teenager. Maybe I missed
the irony or something.
