Help! I’ve Been Shanked! (Shank Review)
I thought that "shanking" someone was a harmless prank, like depantsing or something of that nature. I was way, way off base.
Of course, "shank" is at its origin a noun referring to a certain section of an animal's body (the thigh) that will be butchered and then consumed.
Later, the word "shank" came to be used to refer to knives; specifically, knives made in prison by prisoners. Shanks and shivs wherever I go, oy!! The verb form of the word then referred to these prison stabbings. And more unsavory things can be drawn from looser interpretations of the word.
All of the above came as preliminary research before I booted up the game SHANK, released on PSN and XBLA from developer Klei Entertainment and publisher EA at the end of August. With nothing but research on the game's title as my backup, I still had quite a bit of surprise to go through.
Shank. Costumed. Killing dudes on a bridge.
Shank is a 2D, side-scrolling beat 'em up with a strong story-telling element. Furthermore, despite its simple cartoon-like animation, it is one of the most intentionally ultra-violent games out there. Fans of the old flash video series Ninjai will recognize the style almost immediately. Though, it should be noted, Jeff Agala's art style is different from the pseudo-anime of Ninjai.
Because I'm a story nut, I tried to ignore all the visceral action (minus 10 points for using the forbidden word) and instead soaked up the dialogue and the excellent flashback sequences. And though it's a great story, it is ultimately quite derivative. Many critics were quick to compare this game to the works of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino; this comparison is absolutely appropriate. Not just for the excessive gore, no. Shank's plot is a revenge plot. Ready for the spoilers?
Shank, the titular character, is a big muscular guy who worked in a crime syndicate, led by a man named "Cesar." Shank is a loyal follower, but one day he falls in love with a young lady and gets her pregnant. Cesar tells Shank he must kill the girl (as a rather sick test of loyalty), but Shank is obviously reluctant to do so. So Cesar sends 4 of his other high-level goons to kill the chick and Shank. They take care of the girl as expected, but after roughing up Shank they leave him to die in a fire. Never a good idea; of course he's going to survive and come back years later for revenge.
You just gonna leave me to die? At my own wedding? Wait, no, that would be too similar.
Points go to the scenario writer, Marianne Krawczyk (who co-wrote the plot for the GOD OF WAR trilogy), for a well-executed tale. But no points awarded for basically re-telling the film "Kill Bill" with a male protagonist. Seriously, the entire action of the game is Shank hunting down and killing the 4 goons, and finally, Cesar himself. I seem to remember Beatrix (spoiler?) doing much the same thing. The only difference is that in Kill Bill, you have a reasonably happy ending with mother and daughter reunited. In Shank's scenario, there is no reunion. Only revenge, more revenge, and finally, a man walking into the sunset, with no one to turn to.
As far as the game itself is concerned, I have some short praise and critique. I like that Shank is capable of performing a variety of attacks with each of his three weapon types (fast, strong, and ranged). He starts with just his "shanks" (the knives), a chainsaw, and pistols. Over time he also adds a katana, two machetes, uzis, a shotgun, and chains to the roster of weaponry. They can all be changed on the fly, and each comes with a change in delay and, usually, some special attacks. On Shank's end, the combat was well thought out.
Unfortunately, I cannot give that praise to the enemies and their AI patterns. Basically, the game plays like this:
1. Fight a ton of enemies thrown at you with seemingly no order or strategy.
2. Fight a gimmicky oversized dude who can only be beaten by paying attention for special button-triggered events.
3. Fight another ton of enemies.
4. Fight a more strategic boss (about Shank's height); win by dodging attacks and then countering.
Rinse and repeat.
It's fun to control Shank, but the repetition, even for a 3 hour game, does get old by the end of the first playthrough. You do need to play smart to win; some enemies are simply immune to certain types of attacks. And when you're in a large crowd, one of the best things you can do is pounce on a smaller guy (just to incapacitate him) and then while he's down, shoot enemies around you with a pistol. Interesting concepts, to be sure.
This is step 2 of the 4-step pattern listed above.
Outside of combat, the environments do lend themselves to some fun acrobatic work. Shank can run on billboards, swing on poles, climb walls, and come out of pretty much any sticky situation with weapons at the ready. Motion is swift, and the player has to keep up if they're going to survive. They are pit deaths and other one-hit environment kills throughout the game. Always gotta watch out for that.
A quick note regarding the music: it's good, and thanks to pressure from the fans, it's free to download.
My concluding thoughts are these: the game looks great, though I could do without the excessive blood and many, many decapitations. The game plays fairly well, but overstays its welcome even considering its short length. The story is cool, but a little too derivative for its own good. And, finally, I'd just like to state that I do not ever, under any circumstances, want to be "shanked." Whatever that means.
Played: 5 hours
Platform(s): PlayStation 3 (PSN), Xbox 360 (XBLA)
Price: $14.99
Microsoft wins the summer. Again.
(I wrote this last Wednesday — well before Microsoft's announcement this week that they're kicking off "Game Feast," another multi-week promotion with a killer lineup of games, at the end of this month. Over at Sony? Crickets. But hey, you get a discount on your PS3-protection plan if you sign up for PSN, so there's that.
Anyway, SUPER MEAT BOY, Twisted Pixel's very promising COMIC JUMPER, HYDROPHOBIA and the like are anchoring the Game Feast calendar. Just something to keep in mind as you read on.)
The Hotshots vs. the Icemen! Transcending history and the world, a tale of laser turrets eternally retold. (Uber Entertainment)
If a layman judged this summer’s video game offerings based purely on retail, he or she would be rightfully disappointed. As boxed titles go, the last three months have been dreadfully bare — typical for June, July and the first half of August, but disappointing nonetheless.
Remember the heady days of May, which gave us “Red Dead Redemption,” “Super Mario Galaxy 2,” “Alan Wake,” “Blur,” “Split/Second” and other blockbusters within days of each other? Since then, there’s been “StarCraft II,” and then there was everything else.
Fortunately, we’ve nearly turned the page on all of that archaic brick-and-mortar nonsense. With few exceptions, this summer’s best games have been downloadable — either exclusively or as a companion to their boxed cousins — and priced at $15 or less.
The results have been heartening.
Though I’m as console-agnostic as can be, Microsoft gets the gold star this year. Their third annual Summer of Arcade promotion packed a lot of polish and diversity into five timed exclusives, starting in July with LIMBO (reviewed in this space last month) and wrapping up last week with the sublime LARA CROFT AND THE GUARDIAN OF LIGHT, which I’ll discuss here shortly.
Summer of Arcade dropped a clunker in 2008 and 2009, and 2010 doesn’t buck that trend. CASTLEVANIA: HARMONY OF DESPAIR, with its charmlessly dated visuals and slipshod multiplayer getup, is to this summer what GALAGA LEGIONS and the remake of TURTLES IN TIME were to the summers before it.
But four out of five ain’t bad.
That isn’t to suggest that the PlayStation Network has been totally worthless this summer, despite Sony’s best efforts to make the thing unusable. PSN got a two-week jump on Xbox Live with the video game adaptation of SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, a nostalgia-throttling 2-D brawler that owes more to Bryan Lee O’Malley’s comics than it does to Edgar Wright’s wonderful movie.
As of this week, that title is available on both services.
And DEATHSPANK, the silly-ish hack-and-slash from Hothead Games and Monkey Island co-creator Ron Gilbert, debuted in July on the Xbox 360 and PS3 simultaneously. That likely will be the case next month, too, when the game’s surprise sequel, announced just this week, hits servers everywhere.
Same goes for SHANK, the hysterically violent side-scrolling brawler unleashed on both services Wednesday.
It’s Sony’s lethargy about locking down down exclusives (not to mention those innumerable, lengthy updates that cut off your PSN access) that keeps the PS3 from being truly competitive summer after summer after summer.
Sure, they’ve got the bead on Q Games’ great Pixeljunk titles, and they’ll probably get the exclusive on JOURNEY, thatgamecompany’s follow-up to FLOWER. There are also those wonderful, barely announced oddities, like space-spelunker GRAVITY CRASH.
But four years after Sony launched PSN, it still trails Xbox Live and Steam as a destination for digital content. I’m not insisting that the company line up more exclusives, but until Microsoft stops throwing money at publishers, Sony’s going to have to find a way to get in the game.
That said, here’s my pick for the best downloadable title of the last three months:
LARA CROFT AND THE GUARDIAN OF LIGHT
Available only on Xbox Live until late September, Crystal Dynamics has put together an attractive, robust action-adventure title that borrows the twin-stick shooting of GEOMETRY WARS and the isometric perspective of DIABLO.
It’s an unsettling blend at first, but it grows on you quickly. Jumping feels great, the physics-based puzzles are satisfying to solve, and the shooting is legitimate fun — something that’s never been true of Lara’s TOMB RAIDER games.
The game also makes a great argument for abolishing the artificial cap on trophies and achievements in downloadable titles. As officially sanctioned Microsoft achievements go, LARA CROFT offers a handful of inventive challenges — catch your co-op partner with your grappling hook, beat a boss, jump off your partner’s shield — but they pale in comparison to a bevy of in-game tasks that reward exploration and reflexes with new guns and other goodies. Unlocking them all requires multiple playthroughs and a commitment of a dozen hours or more.
(Your partner, by the by, is an English-proficient, cartoonishly brawny dude native to the tombs you’re raiding. As things stand today, you can play him only as a local co-op partner, though Crystal Dynamics has pledged to integrate online co-op by the end of next month. Until then, so much for those co-op achievements!)
In other words, there’s more than enough content here to justify the full 1,000-point treatment. So how about it, Microsoft?
This article appeared first in the York Dispatch.
Confessions of a PixelJunkie
I'm a non-owner of an Xbox 360 and a cautiously optimistic owner of a PlayStation 3. Each console has had its ups and downs. If there's one thing Microsoft has done exponentially better than Sony, it's connectivity.
From the XBLA library (and the XBL Indie titles) to friend-making to most forms of match-making (I'm ignoring ODST here...), the 360 has outclassed PS3 in nearly every form of online content, be it in quality, quantity, service terms and conditions, stability ... Sony has a lot of catching up to do.
One thing Sony has over Microsoft is the development studio Q-Games. Based in Japan, but run by a Westerner (Dylan Cuthbert), the titles made by Q-Games are often international collaborative efforts. And though they've also done work with Nintendo (example: STAR FOX COMMAND), they are best known for the PixelJunk series: PSN-exclusive titles that hold strange commonalities.
According to Cuthbert, what groups the games together are "simplicity, familiarity, and originality." Though they may have some 3D games in the works for their second series of games, series 1 (labeled as 1-1, 1-2, etc) are all 2D games whose stark colors look beautiful in 1080p, and whose soundtracks will always hold your attention.
I have at least dabbled in each of the four PixelJunk titles, and have absolutely conquered one of them. I'd like to share with you my experiences with each of the existing titles to date, and lay out some of my hopes for future ones. Here we go!
PIXELJUNK RACERS
How can anyone understand what's happening here? Thank the PixelGods this series got better.
This is the only PixelJunk title I don't like. And I think most of the PS3-owning community is with me on this. It wasn't a strong start for Q-Games. Series 1-1 title PixelJunk Racers is not a racing game at all, but rather a strange "destruction derby" style game where your goal is to wipe everyone else off the track within a time limit. The controls are awkward, the top-down view is frustrating, and the "character art" (if you can call it that, for the anthropomorphized animals) nauseates me. Word on the street is that, like the other games' follow-ups, there is an update (1-1a) in the works called "PixelJunk Racers 2nd Lap." I can assure you already that this is a lost cause. Let's move forward.
PIXELJUNK MONSTERS
This is why first impressions, while often valuable, shouldn't paint the whole picture. So Racers was a dud. We get it. But 1-2, PixelJunk Monsters, more than makes up for it. Monsters is a variant of the now tried-and-true "tower defense" genre. I won't explain the details of the gameplay, since you ought to be familiar with tower defense gaming already. The things I will comment on? Let's see...
First, the difficulty level. Technically there are three difficulties for each level (21 in the base game, another 15 added in 1-2a, "PixelJunk Monsters Encore"). Wanna hear the crazy part? Even at the easiest difficulty, you will struggle with this game in the later levels. I know I did. And I'm no slouch when it comes to tower defense. They made this game hard. Very, very hard. If you want to get all of the trophies for this game, expect to put 100+ hours in. (ed. -- I was going to flag this outrageous figure with some sort of objection, but ... you're absolutely right.)
Next, the aesthetic factor. Outside of Racers, I can give only extremely high marks to the visual and aural components of the PixelJunk titles. I daresay that these things are what make me a true "PixelJunkie." The art in Monsters is simple -- almost too simple. The backgrounds could be made in MS Paint (experts in MS Paint, mind you). The sprites (including your player-controlled sprite and the enemy sprites) are sufficiently detailed but don't pack a lot of animation. Again, simplicity is the key. It will never strain your eyes, which is good considering your critical thinking and quick execution skills will definitely be strained.
I don't care if you buy the soundtrack before or after the game. But do buy the soundtrack.
As for the music, composed by Japanese duo otograph (Takashi Iura and Sachiyo Oshima), let's just say it's awesome. Sony acknowledged its awesomeness and actually released the soundtrack, digitally, via PSN (see "Dive Into PixelJunk Monsters" on PSN). Twenty-four tracks of surprisingly catchy (and surprisingly tonal) electronic music. It's a total win. But, in my opinion, even this excellent album pales in comparison to what we'll be discussing next.
But before that! I should also mention that this is the only game in the PixelJunk series to date to reach the PSP. "PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe" includes all the content of "Monsters" and "Monsters Encore," plus more levels, art, music, etc. It's a nice deal for the portable gamer, or so I'm told. I'm not buying the game again when I already have it once on my PS3.
PIXELJUNK EDEN
Without question, without hesitation, without reservation, this is my favorite game in the PixelJunk series. This is the game that made me a PixelJunkie, that made me want to explore the other titles.
Before even getting to the gameplay, I have to gush about the art and music. The soundtrack, composed by artist Baiyon (real name Tomohisa Kuramitsu), is crazy-addictive. It's electronic, but more ambient electronic than Monsters' score. It is absolutely hypnotizing. Each of the 16 songs in the game (one for each stage, plus the "world map" music) have reached "must-have" status in my collection of game music. Even more important is how well the music blends with the game's visuals. And there's a reason for that...
Baiyon did the game's art as well.
So yeah, this Baiyon fellow is a large part of what makes this game awesome. It sucks you in. Play for too long and it might give you a headache. But this game gets ridiculously high marks for aesthetics. Color is extremely important in PixelJunk Eden, and the monochromatic, or low-count multi-chromatic, layouts of the stages in Eden will be burned into your retinas after only a few plays.
This game is more beautiful than you (understand).
Now let's move to the gameplay. All of the PixelJunk games build on already-established genres in gaming, but Eden goes the furthest. At first glance, one might say "this is a platformer." Specifically, a 2-D platformer collect-a-thon. But no, it turns out it's much, much more than that. First of all, the sense of scale in this game is crazy. You play as a tiny little pollinator called a "Grimp." It's your job to plant seeds and make flowers grow. So you "collect" pollen by breaking little round spores and then the even tinier pollen units can be collected and will flow towards a designated spot where the seed can be planted. Once filled, touch the seed, and a plant grows. Now you can move up (or left, or right, or occasionally down) by jumping around.
The grimp also has a small spiderweb that allows him to do a number of things. With it he can spin in a circle and collect pollen. He can also use it as a way to boost a jump in any given direction, or to simply hang down to get a better view of what's below (the camera is fixed). That's what I was getting at with sense of scale. Sometimes the camera will zoom out if you spin in a circle long enough, but generally, the camera stays centered on the grimp and you have to memorize what is around you, because the size of these stages is usually *enormous* compared to the size of the grimp. From what you can see on the initial screen, you may go up as many as 50 times the height of what you see at first. When you reach the "top" of a level and then do a free-fall to the bottom, it's insane to witness just how long it takes to reach the floor. Imagine all the progress you've made!
The end purpose of growing all these flowers is to find "Spectra." Each Spectra adds a flower to the world map, which allows you to reach more levels. Now, each time you enter a level, you end your play time after collecting the required number of Spectra. Each level has 5 Spectra, and you have to play through the level 5 times to get them all. First entry: you need one Spectra (Spectrum?). Next entry, two Spectra. So you eventually reach five, and that means you really collect 15 per stage (1+2+3+4+5). It's a lot of repetition, but you can add to the replayability yourself by trying to get the Spectra in different order, take different paths, pollinate different areas, etc. Only a few of the levels are strict in their linearity.
I got all 75 Spectra in PixelJunk Eden (including 1-3a, PixelJunk Eden Encore, which adds stages 11 through 15). After doing all this, I got a bonus skill for my spiderweb ability. Now I could actually shoot the web to latch onto plants, as compared to the original usage where you must already be firmly affixed to a plant and then create the web. This adds a whole new sense of fun and absurdity to the game.
Did I not mention this game is beautiful? I think I did. But I'm saying it again. This game is beautiful. Each level has a very unique feel, thanks to the art and music. It's a must-have. Thanks a lot, Q-Games, for turning me into a PixelJunkie with this title.
PIXELJUNK SHOOTER
1-4 is the most recent game in the PixelJunk series, having been released in late 2009. It's also the most complex as far as gameplay goes, because it's not merely a shooter. The control scheme for your subterranean vehicle is akin to GEOMETRY WARS (or, for you true classic gamers, ASTEROIDS). But you will equip different attachments to your ship to overcome different obstacles, with the end goal of rescuing stranded scientists. Depending on what you do (or don't) do in those stages, the scientists can be killed by water, lava, or other hazards before you can rescue them. Like Monsters, the difficulty level in Shooter is very high.
The fire and ice ball just got a whole lot puzzlier. Yes, I said puzzlier.
Visually, the game boasts more stark, monochromatic influences, much like Eden. Orange, blue, and white are probably the three most dominant colors, though lots of neon-tinted colors throughout the spectrum make their way into the game. As for the soundtrack, it was handled by a team named "High Frequency Bandwidth," made up of Alex Paterson and Dom Beken. It's not the best soundtrack in the series, but it will grow on you if you continue to play the game.
I think, as a combination shooter-puzzle-adventure title, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better downloadable game. That is, if you're willing to put up with the challenge. For perfectionists, you can do a lot more than just "clear" the stages. You can try to rescue all scientists, find hidden bonuses, and complete areas within certain time limits to earn more trophies. There are also enemies, and even boss fights, and how you handle them will also determine trophy collection.
While many have already declared this game the best PixelJunk yet, my personal opinion is that Eden is superior to Shooter if only because I'm into artsy-fartsy games. Get over it. You can like 'em both. I know I do.
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For the future, there is plenty on the horizon. A PIXELJUNK SHOOTER 2 title has already been confirmed; whether or not this will be like the Encore titles and appear as 1-4a, or as a fully separate title, remains to be seen. There are rumors of a 1-5, PIXELJUNK DUNGEON, in the works as well. What kind of game this would be, who knows. If it's an RPG-style dungeon crawler, I will wet my pants.
Cuthbert has also talked about a second series of PixelJunk titles (2-X) that would all be 3-D instead of 2-D. As long as they continue to hold to their quality standard (minus Racers) I'll be plenty pleased. The PSN library may be sorely lacking in quality titles that XBLA has, but this is more than a consolation prize for Sony owners. This is something you can get sucked into. Something you can get *addicted* to. See for yourself: become a PixelJunkie.
Review: ‘Joe Danger’ brings the pain
Here’s a rare, unsolicited peek into the seedy world of local newspaper video game coverage — I don’t get much free stuff, and there’s zero institutional support financially, so every game you see discussed here is something I purchased out-of-pocket.
I’m more than happy to do that, of course, but I won’t intentionally purchase something I suspect to be bad.
So when I enthuse wildly about games week in and week out, as I’m about to do with British developer Hello Games’ first title, know that it comes from a sincere place.
“Joe Danger,” released last week exclusively on the PlayStation Network, is a bright, side-scrolling motorcycle action game that draws heavy inspiration from last year’s “Trials HD.”
Like “Trials,” “Joe” is split into dozens of easily digestible levels that require precise handling, a certain amount of patience and a willingness to hammer the restart button over and over again.
Both games become very challenging very quickly, asking you to rotate your avatar just so in mid-air or to pass under certain obstacles at low speed, lest you bounce about and inadvertently clothesline yourself. But where “Trials” became unmanageably, controller-chuckingly difficult about halfway through, “Joe” never feels as grueling.
Thanks to its cheery attitude and the ways it measures your progress, you’re more likely to smile when you flub a trick, land on a strip of spikes or plunge headlong into one of the game’s many shark tanks. And when you finally do nail a tough track, “Joe” is all the more rewarding for it.
Some of the levels can be cleared in a single run, but most pack so many objectives that you’ll be forced to finish them multiple times. Exploration will net you hidden stars and other trinkets scattered across three very separate lanes, a la “Excitebike.” Because you can change lanes only at prescribed switch points, and because the game frequently forbids you from backtracking, you’ll almost certainly miss a few items on your first go.
Fortunately, the game is built with that in mind. If you’ve found a level’s hidden stars but haven’t managed to sustain a trick combo all the way through, for example, you’ll get partial credit — usually enough to advance.
But if you’re a compulsive collector who doesn’t move on until all of a level’s quests are satisfied, be prepared for the long haul.
This is where I collapsed with “Trials.” Though I had unlocked the bulk of that game, I refused to advance to a given stage until I earned a gold medal in the one before it. That meant mastering an incredibly sensitive (and occasionally quirky) physics system and memorizing every ramp, wooden plank and pile of tires.
“Joe” is much more forgiving in that respect — you don’t have to lean halfway back and turbo-tap the gas to scale a nearly vertical rock face, for example — though it’s no slouch in the dexterity department. Every one of your fingers will be assigned to one or two buttons to manage boosting, ducking, jumping, flipping and tricking, and though that feels daunting at first, it becomes second-nature soon enough.
The busy controls also create some of your most memorable spills. As I write this, I’m still stuck on a stage that needs me to simultaneously boost and jump off a ramp (the square and x buttons), stop my momentum and move backward in mid-air (L2), pull off a backflip (left thumbstick) and grab trick (L1) to restore my boost meter, land on both wheels and turbo under a gate.
I can do it slowly if I set my mind to it, but to clear the level in the prescribed time, I have to do it quickly and flawlessly.
I had messed it up 46 consecutive times before I left for work this morning (like “Trials,” “Joe” helpfully keeps count of your screw-ups), landing on my neck or rocketing into a wall, and it was hilarious every time. That’s the distilled essence of a great action game. Even dying is fun.
I’ve spoken here only about the single-player career mode, but “Joe” also packs a suite of online and local multiplayer options, and its sandbox mode features one of the easiest track creators I’ve ever had the joy of using.
You can exchange user-made tracks over the Internet, though the game sadly lacks a marketplace where you can upload or download standout levels. Unless you have friends playing the game online, you’re out of luck.
That’s a relatively minor gripe, though, and among consoles, it’s something only “LittleBigPlanet” has started to figure out. “Joe Danger” is one of the best games available on Sony’s online service, and it should appeal to gamers and Super Dave Osborne fans everywhere.
This article originally appeared in the York Dispatch.