If there’s one genre of games that hasn’t exactly been popular recently in the mainstream it’s adventure games. Many years ago the torch was held high by companies like Lucasarts with games like Monkey Island. Nowadays the torch is mainly held high by Telltale Games and games like, er, Monkey Island. Deathspank is an adventure game by somebody closely linked with Monkey Island, Ron Gilbert, so expectations were high.
It launched last July and I played through for a while before getting distracted. I can’t remember why, probably the latest shiny came out and I was in a bit of a gaming lull then anyway but after seeing a friend play it last week I jumped in again this weekend and in fact ended up spending money because of it as I grabbed the sequel as well. Never underestimate the power of 3rd party sites being able to track what your friends are playing to get people back to your games and drive sales, something incidentally that I think Sony needs to address with the PSN.
Deathspank is a 3D adventure game that sees you, as the titular character, seeking out The Artifact. It’s a fantasy world that’s full of humour and nods to other titles, even going as far as mentioning World of Warcraft by name. In fact the game has been influenced greatly by Blizzard I would say, with it feeling very much like a single player MMO with a lot of the quests being the sort of thing you would expect from something like WoW, with there being many nods to the absurdness of MMO quests in general. Gilbert actually described the game early on as Monkey Island meets Diablo, but it’s probably more accurate to say that it’s a humourous adventure with a diablo style gear system, and therefore quite like some MMOs too.
Graphically the game is very good. It has a cartoon style with some nice animation. The world is presented as if it’s on a rotating world that’s far too small to contain more than a short distance away from you. this means that as you’re walking along the background can be rotating into view in a very pleasing way. A lot of elements such as trees and buildings are flat billboards which helps to give the style a very distinctive look that works well for the game. In fact it almost oozes charm all the way through.
One really nice feature is that the game is fully voiced, and the voice of Deathspank himself is worthy of note in an over the top way. If there is a problem with this, then it’s the fact that while taking swipes at MMOs it’s actually taking another subtler swipe at the fact that they aren’t fully voiced. I don’t think it intends to do this, but it”s something that stood out as a contrast for me.
Deathspank is one of those games that you either get or don’t; you either like the humour or find it annoying and smug. If you like Ron Gilbert style humour you will most likely love the game and should have played it already. If you don’t the you should probably really avoid this game. I found myself drawn to not only complete the game (my 3rd of the year already, I’m doing well) but I also ended with getting all the achievements. This is mainly because there were only a couple that I wouldn’t have gotten just from how I played through it, but I did continue playing after the credits to grab my last 1/3rd of a level to reach level 20.
It’s not an overly long game, and as a download available on PS3, 360 and PC it’s not expected to be so. It will suck up a pleasing solid day of play though if you’re going through and completing all the quests while seeing the world. It’s well worth the asking price
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