No wonder the word Shank so consonant to Russian "tire", although it is translated in a completely different way. If you want, consider God's fishing or count with a simple coincidence, but it is this letter combination that ideally conveys the essence of the new game of an not too well -known office Klei Entertainment. In it you have to have narrow, long and not very neat stripes to chop about half a hundred bandits. The role of the chef is Shank himself, suspiciously similar to the caricature Marcus of Phoenix.

Shank Shank Shank

At the first glance at Shank, I really want to fall in love immediately and irrevocably. Well, how can you go past the cruel bloody action, made in the style of a cult in certain circles of the animated series "Samurai Jack"? Shank with an anger skewed with anger, knit bastards with knives, saws a chainsaw, puts grenades in a throat, shoots from pistols in the air, pounds them on the floor and cuts in half a sword. There is so much blood, as expected, even Countess Elizabeth Batori would have rolled her eyes with pleasure. Moreover, all this was painted professional animators, and therefore all the movements of Shanka look as stylish and clearly as possible.

So you can say about the whole game in general. It feels like she than ever came close to good cartoons or even comics. Drawn without unnecessary details, but at the same time in each frame there is everything necessary to penetrate what is happening. In such projects, it usually does not devote time to the elaboration of the environment, background, history and the world in which everything happens. This is not to say that Shank has achieved in this field some heroic successes, but he manages without unnecessary words, in some images, to tell the player in which unfriendly atmosphere everything happens. Here, time Casper Spins sister sites stopped at sunset, the buildings are discarded by long shadows, and dirty yellow, marsh-green and pale brown shades prevail in the color scheme. Here every second resident is a gangster, and every first is a snitch, crazy or just an ugly little man.

And on such a noor background, a wild adrenaline act unfolds in front of our eyes. Shank is like an ordinary two -dimensional action, in which everyone beats in a sixteen -bit era. But if you dig a little deeper, it turns out that by mechanics this game is a slightly simplified and flat version Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. The hero can simultaneously use three types of weapons: light and quick knives, something gunshot and one of the slow, but especially traumatic devices for serious bodily injuries.

The whole juice is that each of the deadline tools is responsible for its own button, so it becomes possible to conduct unusual sadistic combo from a couple of dozens, and after a short training – from one and a half hundred beats. However, there is one unpleasant nuance: if Shank began to do something, then he will certainly bring it to the end, despite the external irritants. So do not be surprised that when you need to urgently put the block, the hero enthusiastically continues to unscrew his head to the opponent and as a result will catch a bullet or flames of trimming the pipe on the ribs.

True, you can quickly get used to such a slope of Shanka and you begin to calculate attacks ahead. A natural massacre is going on on the screen at this moment. Make a series of attacks with knives, with one hand to nail the enemy to the floor, with the other to shoot the bandits advancing on the opposite side of the screen, cut the bunnes -like reptile lying under you, but to throw the nearest gangster into the air and release a complete clip from the “ultrasound”, get the mast and get the mast to throw the surrounding enemies around the sides, and the most arrogant Verzil to call into the eye with a fist, wrapped in a backbone chain … In a word, the hands after the game in Shank are shaking like a person who has just passed Bayonette at the maximum level of difficulty.

Especially after fighting with bosses. Each of them, as expected, has its own weakness, and your task to find this weakness and mercilessly exploit to a complete and unconditional victory, simultaneously dodging the evil attacks of the distress mafiosi (as, we have not yet said that Schank Avenue for death for death Girlfriends?). The first child must be forced to knock his forehead against the wall and then cut him a number of a chainsaw, and a butcher, for example, needs to be strangled with a chain with a hook after he clung to him for one of the freshened carcasses hanging from the ceiling.

Shank Your Booty

Strictly speaking, everything that is in Shank, we have already seen in last year The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai. There, too, if you remember, a samurai with a tesak shred to bloody scraps of all kinds of dark personalities. And as in that game, Shank has the same main problem: monotony. Yes, everything that is written in the first part of our review sounds like a humid dream of a lover of slasers and bloody action. And this is really so – the potential embedded in the game will give a hundred points forward to many PSN and Xbox Live titles. The problem is that the fantasies of the authors were not enough to reveal this potential. Except for the bosses, the developers did not come up with a single truly interesting situation. And those invented, it would be better not to come up with at all (to everyone who broke the gamepad in an episode with accidental rockets, we express our sincere condolences).

Throughout the game, you overcome the same obstacles and kill changing externally, but the same in behavior of enemies. Their number increases, the number of clicks on the buttons per second increases to prohibitive heights, but at some point you catch yourself thinking that you are doing all this automatically, like a monkey. Adrenaline is whipping, his eyes are bulging, the gamepad is cracking, and emotions somewhere closer to the last third of the game evaporate somewhere.

Perhaps that is why the game was made so short: it passes without unnecessary fuss in three hours. Another hour can be killed on a kutsy cooperative regime (and only one console, without online), which, on the one hand, is very interesting, and on the other, extremely short and with boring bosses, all the difference and the usual consists in an enlarged ruler. health. Why you can’t get through the whole game together – a riddle covered with cakes with blood.

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Is it worth it to spend on Shank $ 15, which are asked for it? A difficult question, an unambiguous answer to which is not. The game turned out to be good, but at the same time too short and monotonous. The developers did not even bother to throw the modes that have traditional for such games that could extend pleasure (the battle with all bosses in a row on the same line of health or, say, an endless war with ordinary opponents for survival, as in Left 4 Dead 2 ). Therefore, the correct answer is likely to be as follows: if you do not feel sorry – spend. Your portion of pleasure from the wonderful artistic style of the game and from hurricane fights you will certainly receive. Just don't expect too much from Shank.

Reigracy – No

Cool plot – No

Originality – No

Easy to master – Yes

Evidence of expectations: 70%

Gameplay: 7

Graphics: 8

Sound and music: 8

Interface and management: 8

Waited? Beautiful, stylish and very bloody two -dimensional action, unable to, unfortunately, to captivate for a long time.

Mania rating: 7.5

"Fine"