As Discussed in Perpetual Geek Machine podcast: Episode #00005

Deathspank has been referred to as Diablo meets Monkey Island, and while I suppose that’s a fine comparison if you need to do it in just a few words I think Deathspank has a lot more to offer than just a Diablo clone with some funny bits.

I was never much of a Diablo fan (only played it a bit) but my love for Money Island has been the stuff of legend amongst the people that will let me talk about it. So while I was excited for Deathspank it remained to be seen whether or not I’d actually enjoy it.

If you like button mashing, loot dropping games mixed with some pretty funny dialogue and story bits with over the top voice work then oh brother Deathspank is for you. You play as the title character, Deathspank, the most over the top stereotypical “hero” running around the countyside killing just bout anything in his path… all while wearing a purple power thong. Lord Von Prong want to get a hold of this thong and will do just about anything to get it, including kidnapping poor helpless orphans! If Deathspank could only get his hands on “The Artifact” then the tables just might turn… or not.

Deathspank does an admirable job of combining two pretty dissimilar genres, that of point and click adventure games and kill and loot Diablo games. There are light puzzles, NPC conversation and item combination and use that seems ripped right out of an old Lucasarts game while the meat and potatoes of the game will have you pounding buttons, killing tons of creatures and looting their corpses for better armor and weapons. I found the combination of genres very enjoyable and offered me a good mix of both puzzles and fighting to keep me interested the entire game.

The game allows you to map a different weapon to each face button on the controller and you can put different potions on different directions of the d-pad. By combining different weapons and super-powerful orbs you can get a pretty devastating combo going. Killing multiple enemies fills up your “Justice” meter and once full lets you unleash a special attack. There is tons of loot to find and equip, but I do wish there was a bit more variety to what they did. For example on armor there’s no health regeneration or leech damage, just some bonus HP and maybe some resistance. It’s ok but a wider variety of stats would’ve been welcome

The graphic style is polygonal with an overhead perspective that curls off into the distance. It gives the impression of a very small world since you always seem to be running over the horizon. All of the environmental elements like trees and buildings look like 2D cutouts with gives the game almost a pop-up book come to life feel.

The story is there, but it’s not enough of a drive to make you play though the game alone. I mean, it makes sense… in a Ron Gilbert kind of way. Though, when a magical talking tree requires you to find him a copy of the album Live at Budokan and your character makes reference to bittorrent I suppose “makes sense” is a sliding scale. My favorite character was Eubrick, a ex-adventurer who’s now just an old man with an ax sticking out of his back that you help by clearing out his old quest log of unfinished quests.

The jokes never really hit the laugh out loud classic comedy level by any stretch, but I found myself chuckling though most of the game’s conversations and item descriptions. And with World of Warcraft basing more than a few quests on collecting poop it was nice to see a hero finally call out a questgiver for requiring the player to find and harvest demonic or unicorn shit as part of a quest.

To put it simply, Deathspank is a perfect utilization of what the downloadable content realm is best at, short 4-7 hour games that move beyond the standard arcade port and offer some depth without giving you all the bells and whistles of a full retail release. These type of games are able to take chances that retail games never could, and don’t need to insert a bunch of filler stuff just to justify the 60 dollar cost. What makes that such a nice situation to be in is exemplified in Deathspank, it’s a good solid game for the time it takes to play through it, but trying to make that game significantly longer would only served to make it worse. As it stands Deathspank gave me a good number of enjoyable hours and was easily justified at it’s price point of 15 dollars.