Shank 2 announced during EA Vegas press conference, coming 'early 2012'

Electronic Arts is hosting a gaming press event in Las Vegas this week, and was promising the reveal of "at least one completely new title" and it looks like that title is ... Shank 2?

In EA's liveblog, when asked "Is this the 'new ip' ?," EA's Andy Katkin replied, "You got it Mike." We're as confused as you are, but this other comment by Katkin may provide some insight. "Shank 2 isn't just a reboot of Shank," Katkin wrote, "it's an entirely new game." Klei Entertainment's Jamie Cheng said, "What we did was rip the game apart and reconstruct it to allow us to have more responsive controls and better graphics. We tore our combat system apart ... and created new controls to be able to use the enemies' weapons against themselves."

Klei also added an online co-op mode, a feature largely tacked onto the original, by way of a "prequel" level. "Instead of just giving another co-op campaign that you play once and never play again," Cheng explained, "we took the mechanics and created a new way of playing: multiplayer co-op survival mode." We don't know what that string of buzzwords means either, but we suspect we'll find out soon enough (horde mode, right?).

Shank 2 will be "available in early 2012," on the same digital distribution services as the original, including XBLA, PSN, and PC.%Gallery-135014%