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DeathSpank

DeathSpank

Written by Monkey Island co-creator Ron Gilbert, Deathspank is the tale of a hero of epic proportions. Dispenser of Justice, a Vanquisher of Evil, and a Hero to the Downtrodden. He is... Deathspank.

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Deathspank, seen only as a game, is a rather straightforward affair. It's a hack'n'slash dungeon crawler (without much crawling through actual dungeons) with tons of different items to be looted, equipment to be, well, equipped and new weapon upgrades spewing like fountains out of the corpses of your slain enemies. And gold. Tons of gold.

It's also not a very challenging game. It mostly comes down to pressing buttons until your enemies die, watching your health bar and popping a health potion when it starts to run dry. Check points are plentiful and very seldom will it feel like a struggle to return to where you happened to die. The only death penalty is dropping some gold, which is easy to pick back up.

DeathSpank

There's also a co-op mode, that someone referred to as "girlfriend-mode". While that might be a rather horrible term, I can see what the person is getting at - while the first player controls Deathspank, the protagonist, the other player takes on the role of his wizard sidekick. While he looks hilarious, he doesn't really do that much except throwing spells around and healing Deathspank when he's in trouble. He gets no upgrades, new armor or weapons and the two characters even share their healthpool.

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As a game, Deathspank is good at what it does. It doesn't dig itself down with tons of stats and the easiest thing to do is just to set the game to change Deathspank's armor whenever an upgrade is picked up. Then the only thing you as a player need to worry about is shifting out your weapons whenever a new one is picked up. There are certain powerful attacks that can be unleashed by pressing buttons simultaneously, but most of the time there's no real need to worry about such complicated matters - just make sure to not hammer away on one button so you rack up combinations and make more damage and you'll be fine.

DeathSpank

The main drawing point of Deathspank is the humor, signed Monkey Island co-creator Ron Gilbert. Frankly, it's hilarious. The humor might be as simple as the game mechanics, depending on such tropes as idiot farmers, repetition and a main character so stupid that it's a wonder that he manages to get his spiky helmet on in the morning. But the dialogue all through Deathspank is wonderfully written - I laughed many times during my playthrough and when the game finally ended I wanted more of the same.

If you're a fan of hack'n'slash-games, sitting on needles for Diablo III and throwing a block party when Torchlight II was announced, Deathspank might not be for you. It's too shallow to please the more hardcore fans of the genre. But it doesn't even pretend that it in any way would. It's a fun, charming game set in a humorous fantasy world, filled with ogres, demons and flesh eating unicorns (I've always known those things were evil!). It has action, swords and giant axes. It has one of the coolest main characters in a long time.

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DeathSpank

For what it is, Deathspank is one of the funniest titles released on XBLA so far this year. Adding in some easy to get and great-looking Avatar awards and good achievements (c'mon, you know you care about stuff like that), it's a work of love. It's nice to see Ron Gilbert writing for a game again, it's been a while, and I'm looking forward to some added DLC or a proper sequel, even if Gilbert sadly has left Hothead Games.

08 Gamereactor UK
8 / 10
+
Hilarious story, great characters, lovely voice acting
-
Rather simple, co-op mode could be more advanced
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

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DeathSpank

REVIEW. Written by Petter Mårtensson

Deathspank, our hero, is the Dispenser of Justice, a Vanquisher of Evil, and a Hero to the Downtrodden. Now that's epic.



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