Shank 2 is both an Improvement and a let down from the first entry. In some areas its better but in most I would say is worse.


You have a parry mechanic now which makes combat more reaction based and more in depth. The art seems to improve as well in certain areas such as the backgrounds and overall detail of the game. I love the depth of field they gave to the game by making enemies come from the front of the screen into the battlefield or when you blow one up and the gibs fly towards your screen. There are environmental objects in each level that you can interact with now that aid you in combat as well as enemies drop weapons that you can use against them. You have tons of new execution moves that you can do when parrying an enemy. You get to pick different explosives between each mission and there is also a new heavy weapon and range weapon. There's a new gamemode called Survival with tons of different characters to choose from which can add longevity to the game if you have a buddy to play with. Still the same fun combat albeit slightly different (more on that later).


A lot of enemies now have very specific moves that are unblockable and they just spam those same moves multiple times and do nothing else. Shank does not react fast enough on the dodge roll a lot of the times for you to not get hit by these specific moves and these enemies also have an anti staggering effect when they are performing these moves so you cannot stop them from doing them most of the times. Your combat animations also affect this as since Shank has to finish an animation, you cannot dodge roll out of the way. The story somehow got worse, I was very uninterested in it and it was very shallow and basic, more basic than the first game. At least Shank 1 had a little bit of excitement to it and it was cool and edgy, this one was just dumb. The game overall felt very out of theme, as if the franchise lost its identity. Shank 2 was much shorter than the first game and it was also not as fun even if it had all these new bells and whistles to it. The first game had so many bosses for you to fight with you having to figure out specific things about them to do extra damage. There was at least one per level, sometimes two, this one was lacking in that department. You only fought around 6 bosses total and almost all of them were very annoying to fight as well, it was kind of disappointing. They also added this thing in the middle of boss fights where you grapple them once and it plays a cut scene of you hurting them, then it goes back into the fight, completely cutting the flow of gameplay. The checkpoint system is much worse, Shank 1 you died and the game immediately spawned you close to where you died. In this game, you die, a loading screen appears, it says you died, then gives you an option to try again or go back to the menu, then SOMETIMES it spawns you close to where you died, other times you would need to do a whole section again. Why is the game constantly reminding me with pop ups how to dodge, how to counter, what button to press, every single damn time I miss a dodge or a parry, I'm not getting hit on purpose, and you cant turn tips off ANYWHERE in the menu. The combat as I said is the same as the last game... Except it isn't. This one is not very hack and slashy as Shank 1, its more heavy and grounded like a regular Beat em up. This is not an improvement in any way as you still do the same move sets but now you cant flow as well as you used to, you're much slower. The Heavy attack is incredibly powerful in this game as it kills enemies quickly and is fast enough for you to use it consecutively and abuse it to the point where enemies cant spam the one move they always do. You cant switch between weapons anymore during a level, now you have to choose what you want before you start the mission, I don't understand why they thought this would be better as this limits you. The music is repetitive and felt like I was listening to the same track throughout the whole game.


Shank 2 was an improvement but also a downgrade. Where they added new things for you to play with they also took away what made the first game so good. Their focus on a different gamemode might have to do with this as it feels like the base game is not as fleshed out as Survival mode. I do not recommend you play this game unless if you wanted to see where the series was heading towards or just wanted more Shank. If you have Shank 1 just stick with that one as it is the much better product. If you haven't played Shank at all, only play the first one because this one does not really add much value for it to be a sequel.