
The cumulative issues prevent DeathSpank from reaching more memorable height It’s always fun and functional, but in a perfectly forgettable way in which there are no glaring problems or stellar gameplay moment The hodge-podge of good ideas are held together with minimal structure, meaning that DeathSpank has little internal momentum beyond your own desire to explore and listen to irreverent dialogue. The gluttonous sounds that accompany each meal make every snack seem delicious, exponentially magnifying your cravings for a hamburger. The healing process will also make you peculiarly hungry. The act of survival forces you to spend too much time either running away or running in circles while chowing down on frie Consuming various foodstuffs like root beer floats and pizza takes an agonizing eight seconds that literally everything can interrupt. The stark power differential between each of the twenty character levels can further create some slightly unbalanced situation Creatures that had been giving you lethal trouble will suddenly drop in one hit, while anything even remotely beyond your status will be equally dismissive of your HP.Īll of that heavy hitting demands an obnoxious amount of healing. You can auto-equip the best armor, but that won’t help you manage your offensive arsenal. You’ll pick up a better sword with every alternate step, and keeping tabs of everything you’ve acquired breaks up gameplay far more often than anything your enemies are able to do. DeathSpank inundates you with new weapons and potions at a dizzying rate. If you examine the tasks with an intellectual eye, the exaggerated repetition is a curiously poignant send-up of many MMO That just doesn’t make the chore any less tedious while you’re actually playing.įortunately, all such shortcomings are relatively minor. To complete every single one, all you have to do is walk across the screen, pick up an object, and then walk back.

Deathspank platforms series#
Take, for instance, a series of fetch quests carried out for a sentient tree. Are the flaws indicative of bad design, or are the things that you don’t like deliberately ironic parodies of RPG monotony? It makes it tough to formulate criticism because you’re worried that DeathSpank is smarter than you are. Despite all of the self-aware in-jokes, the gameplay adopts many of the same generic RPG conventions satirized in the writing. The humor seldom falls flat, and you’ll always be looking forward to the next outlandish comment. That’s not a problem, because DeathSpank exists primarily to poke fun at other RPG NPCs like Pip Apple and his missing brother Red Delicious all have entertaining quirks and personalities, and there are numerous anachronistic references to things like Las Vegas, cell phones, and World of Warcraft. The other ninety percent consists of side quests only tangentially related to narrative goings on.

Along the way, you’ll fill a bag with orphans while building towards a predictable cliffhanger ending after an epic showdown with the evil Lord Von Prong.Īll combined, those tasks comprise perhaps ten percent of the total play time. In DeathSpank, you play as DeathSpank, a thong-clad hero searching for a powerful artifact known only as The Artifact.
