Well, just based on the premise of this game, the developers might as well have come to my house and taken my money, because it was 100% sure I’d buy it. I mean…a humorous Diablo clone, with a great graphic style and made by Ron Gilbert (one of the Monkey Island creators)? Sounds like awesomeness to me.

Read on and see if it reached my expectations!

Developer: Hothead Games
Publisher: EA Partners
Date of Release: July 13th 2010
Platforms: Xbox 360 (XBLA), Playstation 3 (PSN)

Genre: Hack-and-slash Action RPG
Rated T for Teen

Presentation
The graphic style is really cool. It’s really colorful, which is always a plus. The character models are generally wacky and funny to look at. Objects like trees, houses, towers, and a bunch of other things, look like cardboard cutouts, which feels perfect in regards to the rest of the game visually. The monster design is very cartoonish and fun to look at. And then there’s the enchanted forest, which basically mocks everyone who thought Diablo 3 was too colorful. Overall, the visual style here is awesome. The only problem, graphically, is that there’s a TON of screen tearing, and some very minor framerate drops.

Sound-wise, I have no complaint either. The sound effects are just as wacky as the graphics, the music is fun to listen to and actually sounds like video game music, unlike most modern games. But what steals the show here is the voice acting. Other than one or 2 meh voices, everyone sounds great. I love DeathSpank’s voice in particular, that overconfident hero voice in the style of Zapp Brannigan/Captain Qwark/Flay(from Mana Khemia) is just so awesomely badass, and the voice actor here does it perfectly even in the wackiest of lines.

Story/Humor
DeathSpank is off the find a legendary artifact, known as The Artifact… and that’s about it. You start the game near the end of DeathSpank’s adventure, as he found the location of the Artifact. After a few quests, you find it, but it’s quickly stolen from you by Lord Von Prong’s minions, and you have to get it back from him. At the nearby town, orphans have gone missing and you have to save them if you want to even get into Von Prong’s castle.

The story is fairly standard stuff… sort of. But it’s executed in a completely non-serious manner. The humor is just completely over-the-top. I was expecting some of that dark/dry humor from Monkey Island, but instead it’s really crazy absurd humor and it’s really well done. The dialogues are completely random to the point of not making sense, yet incredibly well-written at the same time (well-written randomness? That’s quite rare). The humor isn’t just in the dialogue though. Each item in the game, may it be swords, orbs, potions, random materials, all have some joke on them. It might be in the title (Cleaver of Cleaving, the “Fire Axe” family which includes sequels like “Fire Axe 2: Fire Harder”), or in the items description, but here the humor is very much like the Munchkin card game (heck, Munchkin actually had a Cleaver of Cleaving). And where else would you put the orphans you rescue than inside a Bag of Orphans (otherwise the orphans would take place in the inventory screen… you don’t want that, right?). It’s very light-hearted and fun humor, even if some things are so very horrible.

Gameplay
Basic controls are pretty simple. Each face button has a weapon equipped to it, and pressing that button attacks with that weapon. Each d-pad button can be associated to certain items: orbs, help from heaven (and all it’s different versions), orbs (invincibility, black holes, summoning), potions (healing, speed, crit, armor) and food. Health potions heal HP instantly, while food fills it slowly as time passes, and is interrupted if you do anything or get hit (you can walk while eating, but that’s it). You also have a shield which blocks incoming attacks preventing most damage, and you can change targets if there’s multiple enemies in front of you.

There are multiple weapon types. Melee weapons come in various forms and effects (some are elemental, some hit multiple enemies, etc.), and then there’s a few increasingly strong range weapons. Some weapons have a Justice attack. By hitting enemies, or perfect blocking, you build up your Justice Meter. When it’s full, some of your items will have the ability to use powerful attacks that hit multiple enemies, or at least deal major damage. The Justice Meter fills up fast enough that using it will become part of your strategy in battle. Also, after getting certain rune stones, you get new skills, which involve using 2 weapons at the same time when your Justice Meter is full.

Other type of equipment features a plethora of armors (shoulder pads, halmets, body armor, gloves, boots, amulets, rings). Each of those increases your HP, and sometime elemental resistances. But never “defense”, which doesn’t exist here. One thing some people might like is that changing your armor pieces changes DeathSpank’s appearance.

Leveling is fairly simple. Complete quests and kill monsters, get Experience points. Enough experience raises your level. In addition to HP and attack boost, you get access to more equipment, and you get to choose one Hero Card, which gives various boosts. It can boost damage, movement speed and various other things, and upon leveling you can sometimes get a new version of a previous card, further boosting said stat. Leveling is fast through most of the game, though starting at level 16-17, leveling slows down massively.

The game has 2 quests types: Main Quests (“Important Things To Do”) and side-quests (“Unimportant Things To Do”). Each quest type gives you items and experience when you complete them. Quests are generally simple “kill enemies to get items that NPC wants”, and the game rarely goes much deeper than this when it comes to quests, though some quests generate more quests, especially the orpan-finding quests. Most quests aren’t needed to complete the game, but quite useful because of items and EXP.

But it is made by Ron Gilbert, so a few quests require thinking out of the box to find the solution, sometimes making it feel like an adventure game (especially one of the final quests). The game does feature a hint system though. By getting fortune cookies, you can, when you get stuck, go in your quest log and ask for a hint. Most quests allow for at least 2 hints: one that’s a bit vague, and another that tells you exactly what to do. Since the quests are generally pretty easy to do without hints (their description is generally more than enough), you’re pretty sure to have a ton of hints left when you really do need one.

One cool system I’d like to mention is the Outhouses. They act as checkpoints where you revive when you die, but you can also use them as teleporters to reach far away areas in the game (very useful in the “grind” from level 19 to level 20, or to reach areas for quests).

Overall
DeathSpank is a very entertaining game. It’s going to get you laughing a lot like the Monkey Island series did, but it’s also quite fun to play. The gameplay is simplistic enough to be accessible, but still very fun to use no matter your skill level. And playing with a friend in co-op mode is very fun as well, and it’s very easy to enter or drop out of a game on-the-fly for a second player. It’s only local multiplayer, but that’s the best type of multiplayer anyways.

There isn’t much variety in the quest style, mostly requiring to get X number of X items, but the reasons you’re doing the quests are always comedic. The fighting is fun and simple, though it can get hard if you’re not being careful. But, if you know what you’re doing and use your shield perfectly, you can pretty much go through the whole game while getting minimal damage. Though overall the difficulty isn’t very high.

There’s barely any grinding, as you get some of the best equipment playing normally (I think there might be a merchant selling the best stuff, but I didn’t need to check that) and finishing quests, so you’re pretty much sure to have mostly the best stuff before fighting the final boss. The only “grinding” is to get from level 19 to level 20 (which is the max level), and even that requires no more than an hour if you do it properly.

The lowest point of the game is the length… I played for less than 10 hours and I am done with the game, with all the side-quests and trophies done. I still feel that, for 15$, I got enough bang for my buck, but some people might feel like it’s not enough.

But still, DeathSpank is very fun and very unique, well worth checking out.

Pros and Cons
Pros
- Great graphic style
- Great voice acting
- Super funny
- Fun, simple gameplay
- A good number of quests and such

Cons
- Rather short (100%’d it in only 4 days, and I didn’t play that much in each of those 4 days)
- Quite easy, ESPECIALLY if you use the shield properly (since it blocks almost all damage)… though I didn’t use it at all and had no trouble

The Save Factor
The game is, as of the writing of this post, is 15$/1200 Microsoft Points on the PSN and XBLA. I think that there’s enough content and humor to make the game worth the price, though the short length might make it a no go for some people. So while I think 15$ is fine for this game, I’ll give it a Save Factor of 10$.

*NOTE: I still have no idea why people are comparing this with Castle Crashers… Castle Crashers is a 2D side-scrolling beat ‘em up, while DeathSpank is more akin to the Diablo series… even the humor is very different*

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