Review: DeathSpank

Disclaimer: this review does not feature any screenshots.

The Premise
DeathSpank is a game about a cartoon hero named DeathSpank (most creative parents of the year award) and his quest to find an artifact called “The Artifact” (least creative name of the year). His path is paved in blood, and steel, and bacon. You play through the game mashing any of four buttons to smash, cut, cleave, shoot, slash, and blow up whatever cartoony animals and monsters stand between you and your goal. On your quest, you’ll encounter plenty of Non-Player Characters (NPCs) with all sorts of wacky accents and mannerisms who give you all sorts of silly quests to do that have very little relevance to anything (which makes them all the more fun). It’s clear from even before you start playing that DeathSpank is not a serious game by a long shot; any game in which someone claiming to be a “Vanquisher of Evil” is willing to do odd jobs for a guy working on a golf course clearly isn’t taking itself seriously at all.

The Gameplay
Deathspank is a hack ‘n’ slash game in which your A, B, X, and Y buttons are all assigned different weapons (If you’re playing on the PS3, these are obviously X, Circle, Square, and Triangle) and, through an inventory system, you choose what weapon to put in what slot (DeathSpank seems to be able to quickly switch through 4 different weapons despite owning roughly the average number of arms). Along your quest, you’ll find lots of new weapons, armor, and potions which fill up your inventory fairly quickly (thankfully, you can grind down anything you find into money, which doesn’t take up any space at all. Ever. Even if you have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cartoony, large, cumbersome gold coins.)

The Good
DeathSpank is fun to play and has a lot of ridiculous, cartoony humour in it. The voice acting is also very well-done, and the whole game has a very psychadelic look and feel to it, like a Tim Burton cartoon if watched while inhaling lethal amounts of laughing gas holding a gamepad. The button-mashy gameplay is fun, but there are bonuses for those who master it (“Justice” weapons perform strong finishing moves, and alternating weapons makes your Justice meter fill faster, for instance). There’s a lot of loot in this game, which means anything you kill could potentially be holding a shiny gift for you (I suppose spiders eat entire suits of armor, or have really, really big pockets.) There are lots of side-quests to do which give you new equipment and hefty chunks of experience, but they’re really just there to provide you with more hilarious dialogue.

The Bad
It does get a little repetitive, there are lots of quests and it’s hard to remember them all (thankfully you have a quest log, but it’s still easy to feel overwhelmed). Almost every weapon is exactly the same, with a slightly different graphic; the RPG element isn’t as deep as it could have been. The humour can feel forced at times, and DeathSpank talks almost agonizingly slowly (at least in my opinion.)

The Price
1200 MSP (roughly 15$ USD) (XBLA)
$14.99 (PSN)

The Verdict
DeathSpank is a fun, little game to tide you over for a weekend or so; it’s not particularly amazing, but it’s a lot of fun to play and very reminiscent a time when waking up early on a Saturday morning was worth the cartoons they showed.