Reviewed by Jennifer – GEV.com
When the original Shank was released, it was met with a lot of criticism from both the players and the critics alike. Shank wasn’t the best game I did a review for, however it was still quite fun to play. With a sequel, I expected Shank 2 to bring something new to the board. Unfortunately, the sequel doesn’t really introduce anything new, but at least the developers have listened to the community and patched up the problems the first game had. As a result, Shank 2 is a better game than its predecessor, exactly the thing I expected the first part to be.
Shank 2 brings a lot of improvements to the overall game mechanics, especially now that your main character can easily dodge with just the flick of the analog stick. Previously, it was a bit hard to doge with the trigger and analog stick combo. Even healing yourself and attacking are not bound to the same button anymore. Shank now does everything better, he runs faster and even jumps higher, his weapon switching times have also been adjusted, giving the player an excellent response.
During combat, I found out that in Shank 2, things now work in a better flow. You can easily execute those hard foes that would become the most annoying in a fight. Shank can easily and quickly get rid of these guys because of the new exclamation mark on top of their head. The game really puts life back to the combat mechanics which it deserved in the first place. Now you can act quicker to all those foes that were once too quick for the slow character in the first game.
In the first game, you were able to switch weapons on the go, but this switching was quite slow. In Shank 2, switching weapons is a breeze and easily accessible, however, you cannot carry all the weapons with you in a single level, which means that you will have to decide the gear you want to take with you in a level. You can also switch the gear if you die during a level. Shank 2 is a lot better experience than it ever was, and if you liked the first game, you are going to love this sequel.
Rating: 4.0
