DeathSpank Preview

Eurogamer has kicked out a hands-on preview of Hothead’s DeathSpank, based on their time with the game at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo. Commentary straight from the lips of Ron Gilbert is abundant:

The demo Gilbert walks me through starts in fairly safe adventure game territory. It’s early on in the story, and DeathSpank’s lost all his deadly gear. (Granted, it’s hard to tell whether this is a pastiche of a hated structural cliché, or just the employment of one.) Our hero needs to get a weapon, which means travelling to an aging local legend, Eubrick the retired – “formerly Eubrick the bitter, formerly Eubrick the undefeated, formerly Eubrick the Bastard of Hollhaven, formerly Sally the stable girl…” – to borrow one of his old swords. As you might have expected, this results in a lot of wayward chat, with plenty of unlikely jokes, and dozens of dialogue options you’ll take just to see what happens. The exchange culminates, naturally, in a quest: Eubrick’s happy to hand over the sword, but he’ll only do it in exchange for a taco. “And not just any taco,” smiles Gilbert, getting ahead of himself. “An extra spicy taco. And that’s a problem because the taco vender in the next village can’t sell extra spicy tacos any more because of a lawsuit.” A bumbling, unlikely mini-narrative stretches out before DeathSpank, then, and at least one part of Gilbert’s ambitious design looks to be in safe hands.

Watching Gilbert play through some of the more dungeon-crawler moments suggests this other half of the game isn’t looking too bad either. During DeathSpank’s crunchy cartoon combat it starts to become apparent that, although the plot is cheerily moronic and the characters are drooling hunchbacked ninnies, Hothead’s game is rather serious when it comes to its mechanics. Seconds after DeathSpank crests a hill to find a group of wide-eyed trolls capering about, Gilbert pauses the action and a huge inventory screen pops into view, filled with dozens of item slots. Each face button is configurable to any of your weapons (although platforms have yet to be announced, Gilbert was playing using a 360 controller) and there are decent armour options, too.

I don’t have a problem with humor in a Gilbert-developed video game, but I’m not so sure that it’s going to go over quite as well in a fantasy action RPG.