DeathSpank is a pretty strange name for a game but the strangeness of the name reflects the bizarre but hilarious dialogue used in the game. It is a hack and slash roleplaying game very similar to the Diablo series in quest structure and the loot system. You play as Deathspank and the basic objective is to complete quests in order to retrieve an artifact of great power, surprisingly called “The artifact”. The dialogue is hilarious and I had a smile on my face most of the time while playing it and laughed out loud on several occasions while talking to the quest givers. The humour comes from DeathSpank’s dim-wittedness and the strange individuals that you help in your journey for “the artifact”, all while collecting better weapons and armour and leveling up. That covers the type of game and the major aspects of the game that appealed to me.

The graphics remind me of the approach Diablo 2 took but much more detailed and better looking. It is one of the better looking arcade games in my opinion and the art style fits the game perfectly. The character models are 3D and the backgrounds are 2D. The cut scenes are short but look great and advance the story well. As you move around the background moves as if you are moving around a tiny planet. It is difficult for me to explain but works well and does not get in the way. It allows you to travel easily and fits very well with the rest of the game. Content wise it is pretty clean the humour gets kind of mature near the end of the game but it is not bad. There were no real sexual references that I noticed and there is no gore when killing enemies so in that aspect it is clean also.

The quests are mostly pretty easy for the most part and take just some logic and paying enough attention to the quest givers to complete. There is a hint system which uses fortune cookies that you find from killing enemies and smashing barrels to help you complete the quests. A few quests at the end of the game stumped me but I only had to look up the guide to one of the last quests online. After I did I felt kind of like an idiot as from talking to the characters involved in the quest made it quite clear what to do. The bosses were pretty easy with the right strategy and as long as you are at an appropriate level and have decent armour.

There are a few basic quests, mostly involving killing, things collecting things, delivering things and a short escort quest. There are loads of side quests to do and if you make an effort to complete all of them as well as the main quests you will probably get around 15-20 hours game play depending on how much you focus on leveling up. I think I was at about 20 hours after completing all the side quests, getting to level 20 which is the max level and beating the final boss.

It is 1200 Microsoft points which seemed a bit steep to me initially but after playing the 20 minute trial I was hooked and bought it the next day. I would recommend that anyone download the trial play for the full time it gives you and if you enjoyed what you played you will not be disappointed with the full game. There is limited replayability as once you have beat it you do not have much incentive to play through it again but the content you get in a single play through is worth the cost to me. DeathSpank is well worth the 1200 points it asks for, will you help DeathSpank Dispense justice, defend the down trodden and vanquish evil?.