Thursday, July 29, 2010

Played Lately: DeathSpank

  • Sometimes, I just want to whack bad guys on the head. A lot of games out there are great with the story and the words, but there is something satisfying about interacting with everything in the game with your sword. Thankfully, DeathSpank does that really well.

  • DeathSpank is an action RPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Your hero, the titular DeathSpank, is on a quest to find an artifact of some sort. Because that's what heroes do, evidently. There is a lot of stuff in the game like that. Hothead, the game's developer, play the games story for parody, while at the same time keeping the game systems really tight. It plays well and is easy to comprehend.

  • One nice aspect is that there are few hard gates on the content. Instead, zones are soft gated by level differences. That gives you a lot of freedom to explore quests as you run across them. But it can also let you chase down a much too difficult rabbit hole when there might be quests better suited for your level.

  • It took me a few days to get through the game. I enjoyed my time playing, but I did need to take breaks now and again. There were several instances where I was happily bashing my way through enemies when I was suddenly receiving the low health warning. Or even worse, several monsters are can one or two shot you without blinking.

  • It's not the most amazing game released, but DeathSpank was a lot of fun and a good way to spend my gaming time.


© 2010 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.

8 comments:

  1. I really like rogue likes for consoles. I enjoyed the Baldur's gat action RPGs, and I even enjoyed the utterly craptastic Fallout ARPG enough to play through it twice.

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  2. Finished Deathspank a few nights ago an really enjoyed it. I definitely got into a few rough spots like you did though. The biggest one was getting to the end of the Demon Mines at level 12 only to run into a really tough level 14 demon and find I was out of potions. I had to fight my way back out again and come back later.

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  3. @ Yeebo - Ah, my secret shame is shared by someone else! I know everyone else hated it, but I actually enjoyed that Fallout game as well. I'm glad to hear that I'm not alone.

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  4. @ Blue Kae - That very same demon murdered me so many times. Putting it out on that platform with no room to manuever was atrocious.

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  5. Coming back at level 14 (or maybe it was 15) helped a lot. The other thing I found helpful was density potions, really helps for big fights, like that demon, the unicorns, or the pips.

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  6. @ Blue Kae - I never figured out what those density potions even did. I hated the pips too, so that would have been nice to know ahead of time. :(

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  7. I wish I could claim some intelligence, but I read that tip on a website when I got frustrated with the demon nanny fight.

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  8. I'll have to give this one a try, I've heard nothing but good things about it.

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