#DEATHSPANK SPLIT SCREEN FULL#

Just in case the title hasn't told you everything you needed to know yet, DeathSpank is more like Diablo mixed with hack 'n' slash and marinated in Monkey Island overnight, which makes sense, because it was served up by the same chef, Ron Gilbert. We're fortunate to live in a time when it's never been easier to get exposure for new and innovative ideas, and I'd like to grant a little more exposure to two recent XBox Live Arcade titles, starting with DeathSpank, a Diablo clone.ĪAAAAAAAAAAA.

The saying works better if you replace 'money' with 'rich businessmen in tight suits who won't even put twenty cents in a gumball machine if they can't expect a return of investment' and 'evil' with 'bland, samey action-adventure clones kneeling on the bed of a dried-up watering hole licking the dirt for moisture.' (And 'is' with 'are,' if we want to be grammatically correct.) It's hard to find innovation in big-budget, mainstream games when you can't make a single design or suggestion without triplicate proof that Gears of War did it, and this illustrates the important of independent development. Hitler was being impregnated by a roll of Deutsche Marks. It also elevates the game above any peers it might have (I’m not sure it does) and almost (for me, at least) totally eliminates the negatives of the aforementioned repetition.ĭeathspank: Thongs of Virtue is rated T for Teen and is available on Xbox Live Arcade (1200 points) and PlayStation Network ($14.99).They say that money is the root of all evil, but somehow I doubt Mrs. In fact, I’d wager that the folks at Hothead Games know comedy better than anyone else in the industry. And, thankfully, it’s something we can never get enough of.

#DEATHSPANK SPLIT SCREEN FULL#

The single best aspect of the game, the humor, is back in full force. I know it sounds like I’ve been beating up on the game a bit, but here’s where it truly redeems any flaws. These, as with the first game, came in just a few flavors: find something, kill something, collect something, discover something.Īgain, I feel like I need to point out that this isn’t in and of itself a bad thing, but the repetition can get … well, repetitive. In between murdering orques and robots and interrogator chickens, we have our quests.

It isn’t bad, but it is essentially hack & slash - and the hack & slash gets tiring after a while. You move with the left thumbstick, and hammer the face buttons to fire different weapons which will (hopefully) kill the baddies before they have a chance to kill you. Though there are guns to be used and abused (and grenades and rocket launchers, too - this is the second main difference between titles), the combat is still basically the same. And while this is one of the game’s strengths, it is also one of its weaknesses. The simple gameplay from the first game is primarily intact. It’s still very impressive visually, and frankly, striking in its bizarre beauty. This time around, we see planes and tanks and vast battlefields and robots and even aliens. The first Deathspank featured a strictly- fairy tale land. This is one of two main differences between the games.

The 2-D popup-book world from the first game is back, but modernized. In another insane adventure from the mind of Ron Gilbert, our goofball hero Deathspank (fresh from his victory over Lord Von Prong) is dispatched to recover the Thongs of Virtue - which entails a silly Lord of the Rings-ish backstory - so that they may be destroyed (since they corrupt all wearers, except, it seems, Deathspank).

Deathspank split screen