Holy shit, I haven’t reviewed anything in months. Goddamn summer doldrums. Sometimes I feel as if I’m not doing anything but waiting for September to come so that the gaming world can pick itself up off its ass and start releasing big name games again. However, as a way to distract me from the lack of new games and that blazing hot ball of fire in the sky called the sun, Shank, the new cartoony 2-D brawler from EA and Klei Entertainment does one hell of a job.

Shank is a fifteen dollar downloadable game on Xbox Live and the Playstation Network. The basic concept is to take a grindhouse movie, animate it Saturday morning cartoon style, and put it in the framework of a 2-D action game like Metal Slug. You play as Shank, our grizzled ultra-violent hero with nothing to lose. You make your way through brilliantly designed 2-D levels that look like they came straight out of Sin City, until you reach the end, beat the boss, and go on to the next level to do it all over again. It’s a pretty standard 2-D formula, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The big draw of Shank, is the violence itself. Shank’s gameplay is all about looking awesome. Time slows down if you leap at an enemy with both knives drawn. Repeated shots with a shotgun cause Shank to turn around and fire trick shots behind his back. You can pounce on an enemy and jab him with a knife while firing at another enemy with your pistol. It’s chock full of the awesome blood and gore you are used to in Tarantino flicks. Whether you are taking down a katana-wielding prostitute with a chainsaw or hacking up henchmen in gimp masks with dual machetes, Shank is all about blood, blood, blood.

This is the awesome part about Shank. With very little effort you find your main character pulling off sick and twisted brutal moves that only get more sick as the game progresses. Unfortunately, the ease of these executions is also one of the game’s drawbacks. Until you pick up new weapons, you will be finishing off every enemy you run across in roughly the same way. Believe it or not, shoving a machete up your enemy’s ass gets tiresome when you have seen it happen the exact same way to 20 other carbon copy enemies you killed just a few seconds ago.

The game has a few other flaws as well. For example, you can only move with the analog stick, while you select weapons with the d-pad. That’s a standard control scheme for 3-D games but for 2-D games it just feels awkward. Many times you will find yourself pulling off moves you never intended to do, and while this can work out in your favor, more often than not it ends up getting you stabbed in the back by a thug.

The game has a multiplayer mode, but the multiplayer mode is kept separate from the main campaign. The multiplayer acts as a prequel to the main story, but it’s depressingly short, giving you few options if you have a bunch of people over to your house who want to see Shank’s stylized graphics. There’s no online play either, which is also depressing, as Shank is one of those games that really cries out to be played with other people, much as we all used to crowd around Metal Slug arcade cabinets waiting for our turn in the quarter line.

Shank is the sort of game that makes you look past its flaws to get to the good stuff. With animations that are so flashy and stylized, there are bound to be some collision errors along the way, and even though that gatling gun hit you even though you were well out of its line of fire, you still enjoy the very fact that a shirtless man with a jheri curl is firing a gatling gun at you. You’ll certainly get used to the game before you get frustrated with it.

Really, if you are considering purchasing Shank, do so because of the graphics. There will be levels where your characters are nothing more than a silhouette amongst the red lights of the city’s seedy crime districts. There will be stretches of running across rooftops and diving through windows. There are train rides in sepia tone that pan across the brilliantly drawn background. It’s one of the most artistic downloadable games available, even if it does lack a bit in the gameplay department.

For fifteen bucks, Shank was a bit of a split decision for me. It’s short, primarily single-player, and it has some massive flaws, but it’s just so pretty to look at. I’d say it’s priced at about five dollars more than it is worth. Still, if you are up to spending that money on a short but awesomely violent ride, you might as well pick this game up.

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