To Shank or... definitely to Shank

This weeks brainstorming session went pretty well. Jeff and myself are ready to get started on making episode 2... again... FOR THE LAST TIME!!!!.... sorry 'bout that.

Not only did we come up with some stuff for our future podcast, we also played a little game called Shank. In what I would describe as Double Dragon with blood, guts, and more blood and guts, fun was had by all. The cool thing about Shank is that not only is there a regular single player mode like most games, this one has Local Co-op, a dying breed of multiplayer games. Rather than just mashing together a second player on the screen for what would essentially be the Single Player campaign just with more enemies, the Co-op campaign acts as a prequel to the events of the main game.

The game itself revolves around two dudes that are... well, I'm not sure what they are, but they seem to be pissed off at anything that moves that isn't themselves, so it's your job to murder everything. There are tag-team style grapple throws and combo's that just look sick. Not only do you just massacre the little minion dudes of the bad guys, but the boss fights are brilliant as well. Instead of just hiding, or rushing up and mashing the attack button, you have to plan out when to attack, who does what, and get the timing down pretty damn fast.

For example, there was a boss near the end that throws grenades, attacks with a stun gun, and random slash-fodder pops up to crap in your cornflakes. There is a part where he glows yellow for about half a second, then charges you. In order to do any kind of significant damage, you have to dodge all of the aforementioned attacks (minus the minions which you should kill, because killing is fun), get in the way of his charge so you can perform a counter attack. THEN, after you counter attack, your partner has to rush up and perform a grapple attack which will actually damage the guy. It sounds like nothing in text, but when you're actually playing, it's fun as hell. I'm glad that there are co-op modes that actually feel like you are working together as a team, rather than just be thrown together haphazardly.

This week (actually yesterday) I also picked up Blazblue: Continuum Shift on PS3. The art style is slightly different, everyone got some tweaking, and there are a few new characters thrown in there as well. To top it all off, there will also be some DLC Characters available over the next few months. It was easy for me to pick up the game, it was only 45$ as opposed to the usual 70, and I enjoyed the first one. I don't appreciate having to pay that much for extra characters, but that's the beauty of DLC: I can choose to ignore it, and for the moment, that's what I'll do.

Until next time, I'm Chris Taylor wishing all a good Gammage.