Shank Demo Impressions

Shank, the EA published 2D brawler that was released for XBOX live arcade and Playstation Network earlier, has been released for the PC on Steam. You can also download a demo that is also available on Steam now. Developed by Klei Entertainment, Shank is at heart, a throwback 2D brawler with amazing visuals.




Shank plays a like those old Double Dragon games except it’s on a 2D plane(and you have guns! and it is without a doubt a better game). You only move from left to right. You’ve got three attack types, a melee knife attack, a melee chainsaw attack, and a ranged attack. There also controls for some special moves such as leaping onto an enemy and knifing them to death.



Let me get this out of the way, Shank is not a game design for keyboard controls. With these three type of attacks and special moves, Shank by default assigns the left ctrl, alt and shift keys to weapon types and the right shift and alt keys to special moves. You use the arrow keys to move Shank around. This makes it quite impossible to play the game using a keyboard. You MUST have a gamepad to play Shank.

Apart from this minor flaw(to be fair the game reminds you that playing with a game controller is recommended right before the main menu), Shank plays very smoothly. The animations and the graphics look sharp and smooth and there is a natural flow in the animation as you combo up all the different attack moves.



The story is passable and isn’t something you’ll really notice or even matter that much. It’s a revenge story as Shank, the protagonist of this game, gets beaten and and his girl friend kidnapped by this large wrestler dude called The Butcher. Shank certainly has the vibe of an adult, ultra violent comic book feel to it with oodles of blood.

This is a game where you’ll be shooting a gazillion bullets at one guy, and leaping up and pummeling another guy down with you knives and then turn around and chain sawing the guy behind you. Lots of comboing attacks into chains. Shank is a well made, polished, action brawler action that if you have a game pad/game controller, you might want to pick up. Virtually that is, since it’s a downloadable title(you can’t pick up a digital copy).



There’s also a multiplayer campaign that only supports local co-op, which is a shame. Local co-op for a PC game? Not such a great feature but for the single player campaign, it’s worth it.

Shank is being sold for USD$19.99 on Steam. You can grab the demo here.