E3 Hands-On: Shank - Preview

Today at the EA Partner’s booth here at E3 I got a chance to sit down and play Klei Entertainment’s newest game, Shank.

Shank is an action game similar in style to classic titles like Contra and Metal Slug where you face waves after waves of enemies, however unlike those games, in Shank our hero (also named Shank) has various tools hat his disposal to deal with the thugs that try to get in his way. These include a chainsaw, a knife (for shanking), grenades and of course guns. The game places a huge emphasise on chaining these tools together into combos to defeat your enemies. It’s a combat system that works great, the gameplay is very smooth and even after just picking up the controller I was dicing and slicing my way through enemies with little to know difficulty.

I did find the jumping to be slightly imprecise and (to my embarrassment) I died several times facing the last boss, every time because my character jumped to his death when I tried to position him on a ledge. But when the platforms are large enough and you have ample room to time your jumps the system works flawlessly.

The developers put a lot of effort into the game’s art style which resembles a Saturday morning cartoon (with a lot more blood then would be found in one such cartoon). The animations are also really remarkable with each character, hero and enemy alike, moving perfectly smooth with no stutter at all. The level I played through was a wild west inspired train ride, with Shank jumping from car to car, knifing down foes on his way to a boss riding a jeep beside the train and suited the game’s hardcore action style perfectly.

Shank is definitely a game you should keep your eye on with its smooth gameplay, awesome art direction and easy to learn controls, don’t miss this one. Shank is on track for a late summer release on Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network and PC.