I got my hands on the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade title Shank from Klei Entertainment (pronounced “Clay”) on the final day of this year’s PAX East convention in Boston.
Shank is a sidescrolling “brawler” in which you use your many weapons (daggers, pistols, chainsaw…) to rip some mean-looking bad guys to shreds. There’s not too much plot or story involved here, but that’s okay – that would just distract from the core gameplay and would certainly feel forced. Your goal is move from left to right on each level and kill all of the baddies that you can. The level I played was set on the rooftops of a golden-hued city, which showed off the game’s tendency towards a platformy feel. I jumped from rooftop to rooftop, and occasionally Shank would need to stick his daggers into the a building and propel himself up the side of it. There weren’t any slow parts of this level – enemies were always close by.
The art direction in this game is pretty amazing. You feel like you’re inside a comic book, and the animation is smooth and crisp. You’ll be able to tell from any of the screenshots or videos of this game – it’s violent. Really, really, awesomely violent and gory. You can rip someone’s face open with your daggers, shoot them in the face with your pistols, or jump and chainsaw them open in mid-air. Needless to say, blood goes flying everywhere.
The controls make the movement on the screen pretty seamless, too. You have a button for each weapon, a blocking move (which I didn’t tend to use very often) and there’s a pounce move that lets Shank go diving at an enemy with his knives out. It’s quite spectacular. But it’s the simplicity of the control scheme that makes this game so enjoyable. There are no overly complicated, 10-button combos to memorize or fancy control stick moves. If you want to drive a chainsaw through the enemy’s chest, you press one button.
Shank seems to be a part of the latest wave of independent, well-produced 2D games that are making their way onto Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network. These channels have made it easier than ever for a developer or a small publisher to get their game out to a massive audience without worrying about physical distribution. Klei Entertainment said that they’re aiming for a release sometime over the summer. I highly recommend purchasing it immediately.
