Deathspank is something special and shows it from the very first moment you start playing it.
Deathspank, who calls himself vanquisher of evil, dispencer of justice and hero to the downtrodden has a mission of finding an artifact simply called " the artifact " from a red haired woman in armor called Sandy. He obtains the artifact through some events, but then shortly after that, minions of Lord Von Prong, an evil person in the land, steal the artifact from him, so Deathspak's journey begins on taking it back from Van Prong...
Deathspank's story isn't bad for a humor based game. Although most of the game's story is presented in Thongs of Virtue, but
Orphans of justice ( title of this game which isn't very well known ) does a good job establishing a good basis for it.
Main strong point of DS is in it's very well developed, fast paced and addicting combat. You simply move with WASD and do a melee attack with
the LMB and ranged attack with RMB. It works like a charm and running around, killing enemies feels great. You can aslo block with space button which might not sound useful at first, but at points where the game gets harder,you find that how necessary it can be. Although like all of the Diablo clones , DS is based on doing the same thing over and over again, combat can become boring and tedious sometimes, but since the game is not very long ( 5-7 hours ) it's not much of a concern.
DS's world is extremely silly and unrealistic and there isn't much logic in the quests, events and character development. So you can expect anything, like an orphan asking you a cellphone. Although the humor of the game rarely makes you smile or laugh, but most of the time, it's at least heart warming and refreshing.
The RPG part of the DS isn't very deep, when you level-up you can choose a hero card. Hero cards increase melee damage, ranged damage, movement speed , etc. But in the end, you nearly get all of them. Perhaps the only depth to it is the fact that you can determinate in which order. Deathspank's strength lies in the equipments he gets. There are plenty of weapons and armor ( with some cool names ) that you can loot in DS and the good thing is that you can turn them directly to money with an item you have called Meat grinder. So you don't need to go to a vendor every now and then to unload your inventory. It saves a lot of time.
Deathspank's graphics looks great. it's basically a mixture of 2D objects in a 3D world which gives the game some sort of unique style. It has a great effect
on keeping the game interesting and engaging.
Although DS is a good game, but it has its own share of annoying problems. The biggest problem about the game is some of its boring and time-wasting side quests ( mostly errand-boy ones ) which are only there to add to the game-play time and nothing more. They are not funny or rewarding, just a chore for people who want to 100% the game. Sum of the
problems in DS are:
- Weak voice acting for some characters
- Sometimes gets boring
- Lack of challenge even in the hardest difficulty settings
- Some wasted attempts of humor
- Short lenghth
- Some needlessly long dialogues
Between all of the games that don't take themselves seriously, DS is one of the best and it's a highly recommended game. With the righ expection and mood, you can enjoy it a lot.