Shank

 Revenge is a dish that’s best served cold – unless it’s that furious, sweltering vengeance that is only comparable to the beating rays of the Mexican sun boiling down on any foolish enough to stand in it’s way or not wear sunscreen.

Bleeding the directorial attitude of Quentin Tarantino into gameplay that will easily remind anyone of brawler, Streets of Rage and that coagulated mess circling around a maroon-stained drain will eventually dry and cake into the porcelain serving up a heaping helping of Shank. Taking perhaps the best of narratives from films like Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico, this is not a revenge story that would make the Count of Monte Cristo pink with envy.

Gruesome to the core, the game is about stabbing an enemy in the face, burying a chainsaw in their abdomen and choking their still quivering body out with chains until they stop kicking. And along the way, we all just might learn a thing or two about ourselves.

Shank immediately has a visual resemblance to Venture Bros and while that is either a veracious homage or mild coincidence, I’m not entirely sure. But, it does make the game a pleasure to look at given all the mayhem that is occurring on the screen. So much so that Tarantino is still probably be eating his heart out over the amount of violence – at least until Eli Roth comes over so they can play some co-op. 

Players begin pretty much the same way many of the characters in a Tarantino film do – completely aware of the path that lies ahead of them and ready for one hell of a bumpy ride. To keep the long and short more simple than a slice of Pulp Fiction, Shank is out for revenge against the people who murdered the woman he loved. From the beginning, all the way through the messy end, that solitary moment is all that continuously gets fleshed out – at times to the point of nauseam.

But it continues to draw players in as Shank goes on his vengeful spree of either slaughtering every living thing in his path or righteous fury, depending on how you look at it. And more often than not, despite being a static character, Shank fulfills his role of kicking asses with a small side order of taking names.

The levels are laid out with a general predictability that conforms to a lot of the average design tenets that have been seen in platforming video games over the last decade or so. If you’re looking for something so new that time travelers will be jealous, then you’re probably in the wrong place. But the concise platforming that includes wall-running and fluid climbing comes together to get the main character from point A to B with only the slight hiccup in between.

But when those hiccups occur, you’ll notice thanks to the screen turning red followed by a scream of anguish that would make Turok giggle ever so slightly. While the controls were tight enough to make me forget about the gamepad ever so often, it was usually the platforming that reminded me of the damn controller, much to my chagrin. The combat on the other hand, felt slicker than a wallet with BAMF etched into it. 

Enemies are usually happened upon singularly or in pairs, but as the game progresses, it descends into a continuous pattern of hapless crowd control designed to keep players on their toes and constantly avoiding having their asses handed to them on a silver platter. Normal enemies are relatively run of the mill armed with firearms, grenades or bladed weapons with the occasion encounter of a larger, beefier character that can’t be grappled and thrown, but requires a bit more shanking to bring down. Dogs are tossed into the mix and have a distinct 2D Call of Duty feel to them as they easily bound upon and maul the player calling for rapid pressing of “X” to not die. Concisely though, each level will culminate in facing off against a boss character with a ridiculously huge stature and a health bar to match.

The issue I take with the boss battles of course are that they fall into one of two categories, they are either too easy or too difficult. Those that are far too simple can have their typecast attacks discerned with ease, making for an unsatisfying finish to a level. Conversely, several of the boss battles seemed too hard on purpose – seemingly calling for a player to die just to get a hint that proved vaguer than just figuring things out on their own. Sadly, this is where Shank seems to fall on its blade and stumble as there seemed to be no happy medium for the difficulty curve as this remained persistent pretty much through the ending.

Additionally, it bears questioning the creative design choice of making “X” button on the 360 both the main attack as well as the button that picks up health drinks – something which I found needlessly agitating throughout the course of play – is a thoughtlessly asinine move on the part of the developers. With no inventory system of any kind, it became a matter of figuring out what attack would best work instead of my primary move, simply to avoid wasting something that was necessary to keep my character alive. It’s a poor move and something that could have easily been avoided. 

Nevertheless, a fair amount in the game seemed to make sense for much of the course through the single player story. Each weapon seems to have ‘a place’ in the order of the things, but once you find one you find works for you using anything else seems trite and arduous despite a curiosity of potential variety. But finishing the game really didn’t lend much to me in the way of replay value. Still, it bears mentioning that I enjoyed much of what the game proffers throughout and might come back to it for ‘Hard Mode’ someday down the line.

Still, a bloody, if not slightly contrived tale was enough to keep me stabbing my way through until the final boss, despite the minutia of frustrations. A fitting soundtrack that would have been equally appropriate in Desperado as well as Shank only served to make the overall art direction all that easier to swallow. And despite doubts of a film adaptation coming along anytime soon, I can completely understand where the initial half-hearted reviews erupted from. All the same, Shank is a slightly above average game that will keep players busy for a few hours at the very least – but, whether good or bad, it will be a memorable few hours

Shank was reviewed on Xbox 360 and is currently available for 1200 MS Points.