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August 11 2010

DeathSpank is one of the latest big downloadable games to hit the market. Developed by HotHead Games and distributed by EA, it is available on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network for 1200 points or $15. This review is based on the Xbox version.

Coming from Ron Gilbert, one of the creators of the famed Monkey Island series, comedy is front and center in DeathSpank. It’s obvious the developers came up with a bunch of jokes and designed the game around them than the other way around. The quests DeathSpank embarks on range from the normal, like rescuing future criminals orphans, to the truly bizarre. Whether you’re (literally) beating the crap out of demons or helping a leprechaun into witness protection, you’ll have a smile on your face the whole time.

It’s definitely not a game that takes itself too seriously. While it doesn’t go so far as completely breaking the fourth wall, the characters are definitely aware that they’re in a video game. From time to time, they’ll reference quest logs, inventories and even achievements. Every character you run into is a fit of laughter just waiting to happen. Favorites are the old adventurer Eubrick who just wants DeathSpank to finish his old quests for him, and Freen, the Felt Salesman, who encourages DeathSpank to tell everyone that he got “Felt by Freen.”

The dialogue is suitably cheesy. Anybody can write bad dialogue, but it takes a bit of effort to purposefully write bad dialogue and have it be good. It all fits, and the (purposefully) horrible voice acting brings it all together. It has the feel of a bedtime story being read to a child, with a parent trying to do the voices. That’s definitely the feel I got from this game, the entire world is one giant fractured fairy tale. It’s a setting that carries over to the art style. The trees, buildings, rocks, all the objects in the world look like 2D cardboard cutouts. The entire game looks like one giant pop-up book.

Thankfully, the light-hearted fantasy humor carries over to the gameplay. It’s simple, but straightforward and doesn’t get in the way of the great atmosphere they’ve created. Throughout his travels, DeathSpank will amass a huge arsenal of weapons, all with funny names and descriptions. Each weapon can be mapped to one of the four face buttons on the controller. A setup I liked was a single-target weapon to ‘X,’ multi-target to ‘A,’ ranged to ‘B’ and a status weapon to ‘Y.’ Additionally, the D-pad offers four more slots for consumables and such. DeathSpank’s attacks will fill up his “Justice Meter” which enables him to release weapon-specific special attacks.

Advanced combat tactics exist, but are largely unnecessary, at least on Normal difficulty. You can string your weapon attacks together to fill your Justice Meter faster, but I felt it fills plenty fast normally. Additionally, you can collect Runes that unlock Combo Attacks. If you have the two correct weapons equipped, you can press both buttons at once to use a super-special attack. The downside to this is that it requires you to equip specific weapons, possibly weaker ones than what you could be using.

The co-op gameplay is an absolute blast. At any time, a player can pick up the second controller (sadly, it’s local-only) and jump into the role of Sparkles the Wizard. Sparkles follows DeathSpank around, adding in attacks of his own and even healing the hero. Granted, the second player doesn’t get the full experience as Sparkles cannot equip new items or gain levels, but it offers a fun way for a second player to share the overall experience of DeathSpank. Just be careful. The two characters share a life bar, so having your 8-year-old nephew tag along can lead to some quick deaths.

When it comes to combat, my only complaint is the difficulty curve. Part way through the game, around level 10 or 12, the enemies start hitting a LOT harder. No warning, not slow build, just all of a sudden, BAM, they’re tearing off chunks of your life bar. Of course, this can be mitigated by blocking. Unfortunately, it’s not just one or two string attacks you have to block, but just about all of them. After this point, combat devolves from the all-out fun of the early game to a constant block-attack-block-attack rotation. Additionally, there are some boss monsters that are vastly more powerful than their surrounding minions. It can lead to some very frustrating battles.

This awkward scaling carries over to the quests. While I like the ability to do quests in whatever order I like, some sort of difficulty indicator would have been nice. At one point, I was carrying on, fighting level 12 enemies, then crossed over into a new area full of max-level enemies. Assuming that was a place meant for later in the game, I turned around and worked on some other quests. When I finally returned, I discovered that the high-level enemies would leave me alone if I stuck to the road, and an entire series of level 12-13 quests was waiting for me just around the corner. Being level 18 myself at this point, the enemies and quest rewards were trivial, though would have been very helpful on the harder quests I did in the interim.

While the game isn’t perfect, it’s still a ton of fun to play. The story, setting and everything else that adds to the final product are truly enjoyable. DeathSpank is one of those games that truly is more than the sum of its parts. It may seem goofy, and it is, but it’s that good kind of goofy that adults and children can both enjoy. If they fix some of the small issues I had with the game, I’ll definitely play any followups. And after seeing where the game left off, and the future adventures our hero has in front of him, I can’t wait. At over 6-hours of fun, DeathSpank is well worth 15 bucks.

Screenshots

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