Shank 2 is a violent game. It's a bloody, gory and fun game too. It has people being torn limb from limb. People being thrown into gears. People being ripped to shreds by chainsaws, being crushed by pots and people being cut to pieces. It is one of the most violent games I've seen in recent memory.

It's enough violence to make me go phwaaoorrr at weird moments and remember that I have a vocabulary to curse or say eloquently, that Shank 2's aesthetic goriness is quite hyperbolic and is somewhat a part of the downfall of it's micromanaged system of violent narrative...and now I will spend the rest of the review explaining what that means.

Shank 2 is a sequel to the Klei Entertainment created, EA Games developed hack and slash animated title of the same name. It had a man running from his past and trying to get to his ultimate goal of being with his family and it seems that the sequel takes place where the original left off and has Shank looking through his past to save the people he loves. While the narrative is on par with an 80's action film, the game itself gets too carried away with Shank being so serious all the time.

Shank 2 has the same problem that Bioshock does with having a very different message to what the gameplay dictates. While I think, as a slightly sane rational human being that what he is doing is right and that family and love is important, his methods of doing so are quite egregious and are often fraught with a lot more danger than it's worth.

More often than not, as a gamer, you come up against enemies with no real motive other than, oh they're henchmen, you better kill them and I wouldn't have a problem with this, but I hardly think by the time I make it to the last level in the game that the ends justify the means. Now you may think it's ridiculous arguing three paragraphs worth of morality in a game, but when you have a man who's health is booze, who's weapons can be found in any hardware store and who consistently beats up women, midgets and people with clear weight problems, you start to question your games motives and how serious Shank is...

But I should probably talk about other aspects about the game, like how it looks, plays and if it's $10 price tag is worth it...

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