Shank (game's title)

I just finished watching The Outlaw Josie Wales and couldn’t help but wonder how much better it’d be if it had music that was ‘more inspired’. I boot up Shank and hear just what I’m looking for at the title screen. Thanks for the link, I’ll download it and see if it lives up to the 1st impression.

Only tried the demo, but this game makes me think if Tarantino made a game, this’d be it.

Ugh, removing checkpoints in hard mode is a really terrible idea. It feels like a cheap and arbitrary way to increase the difficulty, especially after the generous autosaving in normal mode.

I’m only complaining about this because I really want to keep playing this game, though. The combat system easily outlives one playthrough, especially once you’ve picked up all the weapons.

God. I’m really starting to dislike this game. Other than the style, which is great, it appears to get everything else wrong. That might just be me raging at it right now, but… ugh.

God. I’m really starting to dislike this game.

What’s wrong with it? I really enjoyed the demo and I was planning on buying it next week or so when I have more time. If its not good I’m just as happy to pass, though.

Well I’m a total noob as far as these games (side scroller brawlers I guess? Castle crashers, Dishwasher etc. are all brief flings for me) go, but I loved the look of the demo and figured I’d get it after playing it for a short while. However, the longer I play it …

I think the problem is that the enemies really really want to be ON you (there’s no collision), and they’re fast movers. More of your time is trying to get away from them so that your attacks hit, rather than stylishly disposing of them at arms’ reach. It makes sense to want to be away from their melee, but you literally move away so they’re not clipping your own character’s moves (i.e. cheesing you by moving THROUGH your attacks).

That’s my noobtake on it. The combat’s just not chunky enough (despite the copious actual blood chunks flying around, heh).

No the key is to either be attacking first or dodging at the right time. Once you get it down you’ll never die to melee enemies, it’s the ones with machine guns that cause problems. Combat has a flow to it that I didn’t properly grasp until I got the SMG, once you start getting a handle on things you can rip people apart like no game since Wolverine.

Eh, I didn’t want to go into too much detail because I’m still annoyed at the game, and I might change my mind when I play it more, but sod it.

It feels like the posterchild for style over substance. From about the halfway mark (assuming I’m on the last level now) almost every single fight is obscured by foreground clutter, and that goes as far as obscuring the icons that pop up for counter-attacks. I’m losing Shank on screen far too often, both to the foreground and to the general busy-ness of the masses of quick-moving enemies. He feels sluggish to control and to respond, although I’ve only really started noticing it now that I’m having to actually focus on what I’m doing. The button memory doesn’t feel quite right, either, in terms of it noticing my frantic button mashing too early and locking those hits in rather than cancelling out later attacks for movement and dodging. I’m willing to accept that might be my fault and that I should treat it more like a fighting game, and be more conservative with my presses.

It’s also making me shout “Bullshit!” a lot. One stage has rockets coming out of the sky with the sound sample for a whooshing rocket only playing when they appear on screen, which - combined with the controls and the button memory - is a tad too late to respond. Another has falling rocks, which isn’t that much of a pain in the ass until a platforming section later where you can’t dodge away from them, causing me to get smashed out of a wallrun to my death twice in a row. If I tried to dodge them, I’d fall to my death; if I let them hit me, I’d fall to my death. It eventually decided not to spawn rocks there, which leads me to believe it was the RNG screwing with me.

I don’t mind dying in games. I dislike dying in games when I don’t feel it’s my fault, which is exactly what’s happening here - it’s honestly not all that difficult unless there are 6 or 7 enemies on screen. And all of this is putting aside that it’s incredibly repetitive and attacks feel ludicrously underpowered, to me. Despite all of this, I’m still half-expecting it to somehow just click. There’s definitely something underneath all this crap, and everyone else appears to be love the game.

I do love the style and the animation and the voices, though; in that respect it’s pretty much Kill Bill: The Game. Honestly, though, I’m tempted to just go back to playing Dishwasher. I’m actually having to force myself to play Shank more, which isn’t a good sign for a game that only seems to last a few hours.

I find it hard to believe you find this game repetitive and then want to go back to Dishwasher which was even more so and with quintuple the deaths. But whatever, the only problem I’ve had with the game is that any enemy with a gun becomes a major pain in the ass when you are trying to climb up to their ledge and if you get locked into a corner it’s very easy for a single enemy to take half your health away with rifle fire before you can break out. You just need to be quick to swap weapons when the situation merits it, I did find that in most situations the chainsaw has the right reach and raw power to help with small groups of enemies and once I got a handle on the way you sweep the smg when turning around it’s become my weapon of choice for staggering far off enemies so they can’t fire at me.

If the rocket stage you are talking about is the preacher one you should just assume that a rocket is always about to land where you are and keep moving. The rockets will kill most of the enemies in that section and you aren’t required to fight them anyway.

Well, it sounds pretty good to me so I’ll probably give it a try some time next week.

I really like the demo. I just wish these games were $10 instead of $15

I had a lot of fun with it and feel like I got my money’s worth even though I’m not a big fan of the cutscenes or general aesthetics. If the demo’s combat mechanics give you an urge to mess around finding out new and interesting ways to murder hapless flunkies then I’d say it’s worth a shot.

Just be warned that the campaign is about three hours long and incentives to replay are low due to hard mode being hard for all the wrong reasons. I’m having fun just playing again on normal and comboing different weapons together but I couldn’t blame anybody for being disappointed.

Oh, and the coop mode is apparently a completely separate story, not just single player with two dudes. I haven’t had any opportunity to try it yet but maybe somebody else can weigh in on that.

3hrs is very depressing…

Oh fuck off.

Finished it on normal, timer said 4:50 but that might have added in pause time so lets say 4 hours. There’s some cheap stuff but man what a fucking blast. The last encounter in particular showed me that I might have avoided some shitty deaths by using guard + dodge more often. It’s everything I wanted the Dishwasher to be and more.

The coop campaign IS a completely different story. Not only that, but the second character in the coop campaign is Danny Mutherfucking Trejo. I don’t think it’s actually him as voice actor, but there’s no way the similarities are accidental.

Played through it, pretty awesome IMO. If something doesn’t make you look badass, the game pretty much dispenses with it.

If this game had a box I’d want that to be the pull quote on the back.

Finally released on the PC. I just played a little bit of this and I’m loving it so far. Awesome moves and the graphics are just awesome. The keyboard controls are awful, though.

I’ve been enjoying this game (on PC with Xbox controller). Love the art style. But those F’ing boss fights! So frustrating. I got through the early bosses ok by reading an online guide. But even with a guide I can’t beat Cassandra. And apparently Cassandra is an ‘easy’ version of the final boss fight.

Once you’ve lost 3 times to a boss the game should throw an alternate fight at you (eg a much weaker boss with some regular henchman).

When I was a kid I would have persisted until I figured out the trick to beat this boss. These days I’ll just switch to another game and probably never return.

Tony

Dude, yes. I just picked it up during the steam $10 sale. What a great beat 'em up.

re: boss fights, almost all bosses can be rope-a-doped with the dodge move. Just do a 3 hit combo, dodge their counter, another 3 hit, dodge their counter. I think you’re supposed to block Cassandra’s swing and do a counter, but I never bothered. I just pounded on her and weaved back and forth with dodges.

I’m a big fan of the combat. I would love to see it emulated and improved upon for other similar games. It’d be pretty dope to see a modern Gauntlet-esque game with this engine.