Do you remember the Penny Arcade Series on Xbox Live? The developers that worked on those titles also developed DeathSpank, an action RPG for the Xbox Live Arcade. The game also had the creative brain of Ron Gilbert at its disposal (the creator of the Monkey Island series). The narrative is molded around a smarmy young hero named DeathSpank who is on a quest to retrieve The Artifact. Along your journey, you encounter tons of enemies after The Artifact, plenty of collection / delivery tasks and traveling along the countryside. Humor is a big part of how the story is told and it works really well, especially if you are a gamer well-versed in their past work.



The core of the game is exploration, unlocking side quests, recovering loot and upgrading stats. The nature of the gameplay reminded me of Diablo a bit, but with better balance. You can equip DeathSpank with up to 4 weapons, each which are used by hitting one of the 4 colored buttons on the controller. This gives DeathSpank a range of attacks including ranged with arrows / magic. At some point, you will be able to combine modifiers in the form of runestones to your armory of weapons.

As you annihilate the hordes of enemies on the screen, DeathSpank gains the ability to release a very powerful attack on the crowd of surrounding baddies. It’s very useful when being swarmed. It’s also a good idea to equip DeathSpank with the best armor for the situation or the level requirement. You can also boost DeathSpank’s abilities, like speed or attack power, when leveling up his main stats. The game’s combo system allows for quick leveling, assuming you are good at switching out weapons on the fly and avoiding getting hit.



There’s also a co-op mode for anyone that wants to drop into your game. The character, a wizard named Sparkles, isn’t terribly fun to play as he’s really just a supporting character to DeathSpank for healing and boosts. Sparkles has a weak magic attack and shares health / leveling with the main character. This type of character is really only for helping someone that’s having lots of problems with the combat system and can’t beat levels. Unfortunately, the co-op only works locally; there’s no online component to it.

Graphics

• There’s a definite attractiveness to the warping style of art in DeathSpank. Objects in each world appear as if they have been painted and there’s a level of depth that makes you marvel at how the developer masked flat objects within a 3D world.


• Characters and their cel-shaded surroundings are incredibly colorful as well, almost as much as Braid. It’s pretty amazing quality compared to the average Xbox Live Arcade title. There are, however, framerate issues when too many characters populate the screen or DeathSpank opens up the entire map.

Audio

• The voiceovers are cartoonishly stupendous, specifically the voice of Michael Dobson as DeathSpank. His action hero bravado screams of influence from characters like Futurama’s Zapp Brannigan and The Tick. All the voice actors do a great job of providing humor to the game.


• The music has a driving epic feel to it and kicks in the hard rock during the appropriate times when battling enemies. The sound effects are fairly varied as well and match the graphical designs in terms of the general feel.

Conclusion

I’m certainly glad there was more content in this title than in the Penny Arcade Adventures. You are looking at about 6 to 8 hours of gameplay (8 hours to complete all the side quests and get to 100%) for about $15 and the game is certainly entertaining. The co-op mode won’t bring a lot of longevity to the title, but it can be helpful during tough battles. Take a look at DeathSpank if you are a fan of hack-n-slash games or simply enjoy the entertainment from a genuinely funny, story based RPG. DeathSpank is definitely worth checking out.

Discuss This Game on Our Official VGT Forum