GB Feature: DeathSpank: The Baconing Review

In the event that you’re not planning to save the Earth in Mass Effect 3 tomorrow, perhaps you’d be interested in checking out Eric’s review of DeathSpank: The Baconing to see if Hothead’s latest installment lives up to its action RPG heritage enough to keep you entertained. An excerpt:

First off, The Baconing is very heavily driven by potion-chugging. DeathSpank himself is actually a very squishy hero even when maxed out and equipped with the best gear. Furthermore, he’s fairly slow, even with upgraded speed, which means it’s basically impossible to dodge enemy attacks by default. Blocking can help, as can a useful shield-bash move, but the parry functions available are a bit too imprecise to be relied upon. This means that you have one recourse – constantly drink potions, whether to boost your speed, armor or health.

On the one hand, this sounds like a good thing. Too many RPGs offer useless consumables, and it’s nice to see a game that really requires you to make use of them. However, The Baconing also imposes strict limits, as you can only carry five of each type of potion at once. This is done to encourage you to use the game’s heal-over-time items, various types of food. Again, sounds good in theory, but in practice this doesn’t really work. The healing effect of food is instantly mitigated by taking any action other than moving, or by taking damage (or, annoyingly, opening the menu, map, inventory, talking to an NPC, etc.). Since combat is as frequent as it is, you won’t be able to effectively use food in battle except when kiting enemies, and when battle’s over, you’ll have to stand in place for a good long time while DeathSpank noms his hobo stew. This is just not fun, and directly contradicts the game’s fast, forward-moving pace – as does the alternative of constantly running back to town to “potion up”.