Having such an annoying game progression structure gets in the way of enjoying the game, satire be damned. There’s a reason these clichés are hated, and it’s because using them is poor game design. The entire main storyline is basically one long and tedious fetch quest. Commentary is well and good, but every single one of Deathspank’s missions and quests involves collecting X amount of Y items, or killing unique enemy Z and bringing its head/pinky/thigh bone back to the quest giver. The problem here is that Deathspank bases all of its gameplay around hated tropes and clichés in an attempt to mock them. It’s also incredibly puzzling, as Hothead games delivered some honestly gut busting scenes in Penny Arcade Adventures.Īs far as dangling carrot storylines go, Deathspank does little to hide the fact that the main story is basically a collectathon-type game. Being a game that lives and dies by its humor, this is already a major blow. Having never played the first Deathspank game, I have no frame of reference for the humor of the series, but the jokes in this game fell short of the mark, rarely having the desired effect. Most of the jokes in Deathspank fall flat, and the most I could muster for the best jokes was a lukewarm smirk as the game designers winked at and nudged me from beyond my TV. Scenarios such as being given a pirate’s ship for the flimsiest of reasons, having to decipher the Japanese comments of a judge to win a cook off contest, and dialogue trees that end up going nowhere significant have the potential to be hilarious… “potential” being the operative word. Directly afterward Deathspank is given the task to collect six holy thongs of virtue that have corrupted their wearers.īeing a tongue-in-cheek look at game design and story progression, Deathspank is rife with in-jokes and nods to other games. Of course, such a profession is intensely un-hero-like, so Deathspank leads the inmates in a massive breakout, which succeeds… kind of. The story begins with the titular hero stuck in a prison, spending his days carving potatoes. Meet Deathspank, a powerful “hero” with violent tendencies whose general incompetence and lack of mental capacity draw more comparisons with The Tick than Batman I half expected Deathspank to shout “KEEN!” OR “SPOON!” at any given moment. Maybe I’m over-analyzing things, but if this is truly the commentary Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue hopes to make, I daresay it went a bit too far. The second entry in as many months (!?), it almost seems as if the release itself is a commentary on how the game industry is so fond of milking its franchises dry. Hothead games, responsible for the Penny Arcade Adventure games (before the series’ tragic and undignified demise), is at the helm of Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue, a game whose very essence is based on such humor. I don’t mean the “oh the main female lead has such humongous breasts that bounce all around I wish I had such ginormous titties but I don’t because I am a loli” type of humor that’s so prevalent in games nowadays, but rather the satirical, tongue-in-cheek humor that pokes fun at the tropes and cliches of gaming that we have all come to accept.

Deathspank thongs of virtue trainers