DeathSpank Review

Quests are usually more entertaining in concept than execution. Part of the problem is an overreliance on the dreaded fetch quest, and while the game channels the spirit of Gilbert’s adventure heritage by adding in plenty of bits where you combine and use items from other quests to progress further, the game still depends far too heavily on trundling over an area collecting spoils from downed foes over and over again. DeathSpank might be doing it with a sense of humour, but an ironic send-up of the tedious fetch quest is still a tedious fetch quest.

As you progress, there are constant reminders of how the design hasn’t meshed together quite as well as it probably should have. Outhouses take the role of Diablo’s vital Town Portals, for instance, but denying players the ability to nip through the odd outhouse in certain areas means you’d be absolutely squandered if you ran out of healing potions and ran into a boss - which, as it just so happens, I did. A relatively minor upset, perhaps, but it left me in a foul mood as I was forced to trudge all the way to town and back again.

While the game goes out of its way to ensure you’re always taking on new and different enemies, the genre’s conceit means is that they’ll always be dispatched in roughly the same way. Hothead tries to break out of the inherent clickety-click-click cycle of the genre with blocking and chaining, with DeathSpank reminding you that not doing so is a social faux pas, and this seems like a nice touch until you come across enemies that make you depend on them to stay alive. At this point you’ll wish for the simpler times of recklessly swinging around your pointy fire axe.

As you’d expect, there’s copious amounts of loot to score and adorn yourself with, and as is always the way with RPG bounty, it can become quite addictive to hoover up as much gear as you can get your greedy hands on. It certainly helps that there’s an impressive assortment of weapons, armours and the all-important elemental modifiers to keep things sufficiently varied.

The problem is that it all feels a bit diluted, as if a single drop of Diablo and Monkey Island has been added to an entire gallon of water. It also tends to think it’s a bit funnier than it actually is, and the voice actor they’ve brought in to play DeathSpank manages to outstay his welcome before you’re even out of the first murky dungeon. Adding two-player local co-op doesn’t do much to liven things up, either.

DeathSpank’s mishmash of genres is definitely entertaining at first, but it never manages to live up to its appealing concept. It’s trying to combine the best parts of two beloved genres, but in doing so it creates a product that’s not as good as either. Each of its component parts has been produced with a keen eye and a loving touch, but the overall product is lacking. The bumbling hero might have plenty of things to see and do, but you’ll probably have had your fill long before the game comes to any sort of conclusion.