Deathspank was one of the few games (that I didn’t have to review) where I managed to get a 100% completion percentage. It didn’t have much to do with embracing its ups or ignoring its downs, but rather my inability to see a list of potential tasks and an obsessive compulsive disorder/mandate to complete every last one. The easy of accessibility and gorgeous presentation aided my persistence, but by the time it was over I was content with its content. I had had enough of the game and, despite an encouraging ending, was fine with waiting a year or so for a sequel. Hothead didn’t feel the need to wait that long for a follow-up, and now Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue is upon us.
Making Heroic Whoopie
Deathspank’s greatest strength was the quality of its writing. Penned by Hothead, one of the few developers in the business whom legitimately understand humor, it succeeds instances of actual hilarity. Dialogue trees always featured a regular, quest-advancing option laced with mild absurdity, but simultaneously boasted multiple insane and/or non- sequitur responses for no purpose other than to amuse the player. The game was at its best when Deathspank either misunderstood the problem and accidently left the NPC worse off than before, or when you got to watch and NPC’s subsequent reaction to Deathspank’s egregious heroism. Some jokes fell flat (the people he helped were often more funny than the hack-ish Deathspank), but it was so unlike anything else that it got a pass (from me) on its occasional lack of wit.
Thongs of Virtue is no different. Its structure is almost exactly the same. Find a town full of people or a random passerby on the road who needs a favor, and give in to Deathspank’s undeniable obligation to be a hero. Concerning your opposition, leprechauns, bearalopes, and stoopid animals from the previous game are still in play, but Thongs of Virtue, more often than not, opts for different aggressors; robots, soldiers, aliens, pirates, ghost-cowboys, and Santa Claus all factor into the narrative. The plot, while more focused on the elusive Thongs of Virtue than whatever I was looking for inthe previous game, is still mostly incidental. It’s there (and more visible in the later third), but the purpose of Deathspank remains consuming the ridiculous lengths of witty dialogue scattered throughout the NPCs.
Combat is also pretty much the same deal. D-pad and face buttons are mapped to an item in Deathspank’s inventory, be it weapons, potions, or stat boosts. Traces of strategy are invoked through attack chaining and the usage various finite weapons, but Deathspank’s combat still favors melee and ranged slaughter over intense strategy. Boss encounters seem a bit more intuitive; for instance, you’ll have to combat a pirate who has the power to make Deathspank drunk along with a senile nun who happens to inhabit the body of several interface-afflicting idols. Much like the rest of Deathspank, bosses don’t do anything too special in terms of mechanics, rather it relies on the ridiculous context to make it enjoyable.
Deathspank’s look, which featured a wildly animated Deathspank poking around vibrant set pieces and 2D, almost paper-like architecture remains impressive. War torn battlefields, snow peaks, a zombified Wild-West are just as, if not more, imaginative the previous game’s fantasy themed environments. While not a technical powerhouse, Deathspank looks quite good for a downloadable title. The music is disappointing because it’s largely composed of tunes from the previous outing The ambient electronic music that accompanies Deathspank as he travels and the jingle that overtakes it when he goes into battle are straight from the previous game, though the melody does shift and change some toward the middle of the game. A bummer, for sure, especially for an 8-10 hour experience.
Missions remain conceptually impressive, but mechanically flawed and repetitious. Much like its forbearer, missions usually boil down to about five categories; errand boy, kill and collect get behind a lock, scouting, and use or combine an item in a relatively intuitive manner. The context is almost always hilarious; whether you’re opening a passage at a church by burning books in a hexagram, serving an eviction notice to peaceful monks, helping a bunch of bacon prospectors, or paying a prostitute to dress up like the previous game’s antagonist, Deathspank rarely fails to amuse. A lot of the missions, both side and main included, are much more spread out over the course of the game. The menu kept a nice list, but eventually I was running twenty missions simultaneously and I lost track of who gave me whatever objective I had just completed, which required me to fast travel a few places before I could figure out what went where. Again, this is something that could have been fixed had Thongs of Virtue been an actual sequel, rather than the second half of a game.
Content Fatigue
While much of the original design feels recycled (more on that in a minute) there are a few new things worth mentioning. The original Sparkles the Wizard sidekick for co-op play is joined by a Ninja named Steve, though you both still share the same health bar There’s also brand new art for Deathspank’s equipment and weapons, which despite their nearly-identical effect on the gameplay, does well to compliment his new surroundings. You’ll get some ice gear for the snow levels and a cowboy outfit for the Wild-West. It’s nothing to write home about, but a nice touch nevertheless.
More disappointing are the sections that either replicate or mirror the original experience. You’ll still need to blow a whistle to summon a Greem Queen, use the Thongolith to conduct some research, kill invulnerable undead things with a specific weapon, and go collect crystals in caves for the spelunker. Worse, the “new” mechanics are largely reskinned versions of the old ones. Guns and firearms play a much more prominent role in Thongs of Virtue, but mechanically they feel the same as the previous projectile item, crossbows. Special guns with limited ammo seem to be clones of the special arrows from before, and the runestones are, well, still runestones. Even the legitimate problems of the original, such as the awkward block mechanic, the cumbersome inventory, or the annoying healing system remain unaddressed.
A reprise of these missions isn’t necessarily poor design, it’s natural for a series to have a few time-wasting staples, but it ruins the illusion that Thongs of Virtues is a legitimate sequel and gives credence to it really being the second half of the game. It’s not unreasonable to think Hothead or EA internally cut the game in two after its debut in 2009 for a “surprise” sequel a few months after the initial release, or they simply had too much content for a single, well-paced experience and chose to divide it. While both Deathspank games are more than adequate in terms of length and content offered, a near-identical follow-up feels a lot less special, and diminishes the value of the brand. Deathspank is still good, but no longer original, and God help us if they’re secretly going to unveil a third round before the end of 2010.
Not that I wouldn’t devour it anyway.
