Shank sharpens up

GAME OF THE WEEK: SHANK 2  ***** 18 cert, EA, Xbox Live (also Playstation Network)

The expression “heads will roll” is figurative in most contexts, but not here. Delivering a limb-lopping, gun-toting, artery-opening orgy of justice, Shank is drawing his blade once again.

This time the reluctant hero is dragged into freedom- fighting by the people of a fictitious South American country. Like the Driver in Driveor Shane in, eh, Shane, Shank is a lone warrior who can't resist helping the helpless. "I don't do causes," he says, but we know better. Soon enough, he becomes a one-man army taking on a corrupt dictator, cannibals, pagans and other grotesques.

The setting, characters and story are engaging and fun: Try to imagine the Robert Rodriquez Mariachitrilogy crossed with Afro Samurai and a blood-soaked spaghetti western. The familiar Morricone-style music makes a return as well. I've always thought that Shankwas like Kill Bill,but now it's even more so – thanks to a new playable character, the sword-wielding Corina.

The graphics look more like a graceful hand-drawn cartoon than a videogame, but this time they're better, with more vivid colouring, more varied locations and finer detail. There's online co-op multiplayer and Shank 2's gameplay is marginally more tactical, partly due to a more interactive environment: Shank can now commandeer vehicles, set traps and use winches.

There's a lovely fluidity to the gameplay, a violent saga that echoes classics Streets of Rageand Double Dragon, but surpasses them both.

In short, Shank 2is bloody brilliant, but anyone with a low threshold for screen violence might give it a miss, and I wonder what female gamers will make of the obscenely drawn women.