DeathSpank Review

Slaughtering chickens, collecting demon poo, buying tacos for strange hermits – all in a day’s work when justice is at stake!

Fear not, PC owners, for justice has come to you at last! Sure, he may be a little late, but DeathSpank is a hero to all, no matter their technological preference. Vanquisher of viruses, wrecker of worms, thong-clad terror to trojans, DeathSpank will defend your computer as if it were a console! He might even beat up that Clippy asshole in MS Word for you!

[image1]If, like some kind of country bumpkin on the outskirts of Pluckmuckle, you were not privileged enough to enjoy DeathSpank’s first adventure half a year ago, the great saga (or at least the first part, anyway) is now downloadable from that nefarious overlord of PC gaming, Steam. Sadly, there is barely anything to distinguish this retelling of the tale from the first go-around, but it’s a thrilling and addictive romp if you missed it before.

So, to recap: DeathSpank is a quirky, funny action RPG from Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert. As an avid WoW player I was right at home, as the game follows the looting and quest-based models of WoW and Diablo. DeathSpank dispenses his Tick-like brand of justice by running around and mostly hack-'n'-slashing his equally colorful enemies until they drop money and occasionally shiny gear from their heroically mutilated corpses.

At the outset, DeathSpank is close to capturing his life’s ambition, The Artifact (don’t ask what it’s for, no one seems to know). Once you venture past the adventure’s humble beginnings, the story expands to introduce the main antagonist, Lord Von Prong, whose simple ambitions revolve around capturing our titular hero’s purple thong. He has issues.

Bright and silly graphics with high-quality and over-the-top voice acting bring DeathSpank to life. This is a cheap, downloadable title with more personality than many big-budget extravaganzas. DeathSpank’s appearance changes with every piece of gear he equips, making that new piece of shiny lewtz impact more than just your stats.

[image2]But this is still essentially the same game that came out in July, with a few tweaks that make it more manageable. The interface is a little tighter, and there’s an item storage chest in each town that lets you manage your inventory of trinkets and potions and whatnot. The best addition is an item comparison function that lets you put your current equipment side by side with new gear at the press of a button, making it easy to decide which is better.

The keyboard controls aren’t as intuitive as a gamepad, so you’d do well to plug one in for this adventure. Clicking to run around and attack just doesn’t feel as comfortable, and the keyboard is limited to two weapon slots at a time instead of the four with a gamepad. Odd, considering the fact that a keyboard has, you know, a whole bunch of keys on it. Even with the gamepad, though, the game is real finicky about remapping the buttons (when I made a mistake it wouldn’t let me simply delete the button I chose – I had to write over it with a new button) which can quickly cause frustration with the limited amount of buttons that a gamepad has.

So, like any proper hero does, it should take very little thinking on this one before you take action. If you didn’t play DeathSpank on a console, this is as good a time as any to laugh and cry your way through his first outing (just kidding about the crying). But there’s definitely not enough in this release to warrant getting it again, and I wouldn’t even go so far as to say this is the definitive version of the game. It’s a toss-up, really – for more intuitive controls the console version’s the way to go. For extra convenience in the game world, PC’s your ticket.

Either way, DeathSpank would never even disappoint a filthy orphan, so he’s sure as hell not going to disappoint a paying customer.