14 DAY TRIAL // Shank 2 is set to make its debut in early 2012 so the development team at Klei Entertainment has now presented some of the major changes that will be implemented in the sequel to the already impressive 2D side-scrolling beat-em up.
Shank amazed quite a lot of gamers through its sharp visuals as well as its over the top violence reminiscent of old school side-scrolling brawlers.
Now, the team at Klei Entertainment is at it again, with Shank 2 rapidly approaching its release in early 2012.
As such, the company's CEO, Jamie Cheng, has detailed, via XBLAfans, some of the changes made to two areas that sparked quite a lot of heated debates among Shank 1 players: the overall combat system and the boss fights.
Shank 2 has an overhauled fighting system that, according to Cheng, feels much more responsive than the one from the original
"In terms of the controls, we took a long, hard look at the controls, and then decided to rebuild it from the ground up," he said. "Marcus, our combat designer, has been using our new tools to painstakingly position our frame-transitions and hit boxes, and we’ve also been soliciting dozens of players try the controls out and give us feedback. So far every single person has told us the controls feel far more responsive."
Boss fights were another touchy issue, as most enemies were actually walking puzzles, and players needed to figure out their weak spots and do special attacks to take them down.
"For bosses, the approach we’ve taken is to treat them like classic pattern-based bosses with a straight up fight-mechanic, rather than a find-the-weakness approach of the original. The result is that players can now use the skills that they’ve been practicing in the rest of the game, rather than treat it like a puzzle where they have to figure out the one weakness. Interestingly, I had multiple people come up to me and tell me they loved the way the original bosses were designed, but personally I think the Shank 2 way is not only more fun, but can be enjoyed by a wider range of players."
It's nice to hear that Shank 2 will improve upon these areas, so let's hope the team at Klei will deliver an even better experience than the one we got to see with Shank 1 last year.