PSN Review – The Baconing
Staffed by some of the most talented developers in the videogame industry, Hothead Games has developed hilarious games such as Precipice of Darkness and the DeathSpank series. The last in the trilogy, will The Baconing make you laugh your ass off, or does the game simply feel like a bad spanking?
The story picks up right where Thongs of Virtue left off, so anyone who wants to avoid spoilers should skip this paragraph. Thongs of Virtue ended with Deathspank acquiring the five extra thongs of power from Lord Von Prong, the evil Santa Claus, the evil nun, and the others. Since the owners of the thongs represented the biggest threat to the kingdom, Deathspank has nothing to do now that he has defeated them. Because of this, Deathspank gets bored and decides to put on all the thongs at once. Personally, I would think the thongs would ride up, but Deathspank seems manly enough to handle it. Somehow, putting on all the thongs has created an evil version of Deathspank, called the anti-spank. Not only is the anti-spank a powerful super villain, but he has spawned in an army of mechanical monsters. To vanquish the anti spank and set the world right again, Deathspank must throw the thongs into the bacon fires to set everything right again. Yes, the game continues the Lord of the Rings allusion. Along the way, you will meet characters from old games, and new characters such as a 50′s style family of geniuses. The story is good enough to hold the player’s interest, but the real draw is the humor.
The writing is hilarious as always, with plenty of poop jokes, jokes about orphans being loveless, and so on. Sean Howard has managed to keep the jokes fresh and new, even though they still poke fun at the same absurd subject matter. The jokes also contain jabs at pop culture, such as Disneyland, The Lord of the Rings, and Las Vegas. In particular, there is Mutoe, who is a Mickey Mouse style character who has been genetically “created” from bits of meat and urges Deathspank to kill him. It doesn’t sound that funny by explaining it here, but trust me, Mutoe’s cries to end his suffering are hilarious. In short, if you enjoyed the humor of the first two games, then The Baconing will have you in stitches. If not, then the game will be very hard to get through.
Combat is exactly the same as the last two games. You have all the face buttons and the d-pad to assign weapons, potions, and items. You also have a Justice meter that will let you unleash special attacks when it is full; however, only certain weapons have special attacks and this is noted in the inventory screens. Using different weapons to build up a combo will help you fill up the Justice meter faster. Like in the previous titles, you can block for a few seconds, and if you block right as an enemy attacks, you will instantly fill up your justice meter. The Baconing adds a new mechanic where projectiles will be launched back if you block right as they hit. Players will need to utilize the block if they want to make it through the game. Just wildly swinging your weapons around will get you killed very quickly, or the very least, deplete all your health potions.
There have been some obvious tweaks to the gameplay. In the previous titles, there was a staggering amount of side quests, a player could spend hours running back and forth across the map completing dozens of side quests. In The Baconing, the side quests are under a lot more control, with a single quest being enough to give you a good boost to your level. This makes the quests feel more important and not like throwaway missions. The difficulty of the enemies also ramps up pretty quickly, so the player is encouraged to complete the side quests.
All other aspects of the game remain unchanged from Thongs of Virtue: menus are arranged in the same way, Deathspank can still use fortune cookies to get hints, the inventory screen is exactly the same, and even a few of the images for trophies are the same. Unfortunately, two player co-op is still restricted to local play.
The Baconing manages to stay as funny and engaging throughout the entire game. Essentially, it is the same game as the previous two, so if you had enough of the gameplay of the first two games, then The Baconing will feel like more level grinding. Anyone who decides to play through the game for the story will find that the quest system has been improved and there is significantly less backtracking. After putting in over 50 hours across all three games in the DeathSpank series, the games can feel a little like World of Warcraft with all the level grinding and loot gathering, but the story and humor of Hothead games is worth having to kill all those stoopid chickens.
PlayStation LifeStyle’s Final Score
+ Good Difficulty Curve + Improved Quests |  |
7 Responses to “PSN Review – The Baconing”
Good review. I haven’t finished Deathspank and bought Thongs of Virtue, but haven’t started it (it was 50% off). No doubt I’m missing out though.
I have to really disagree with the ‘good’ difficulty curve. I’ve found all Deathspank games to be too hard at the beginning and to easy at the end, especially if you’ve saved up some $ and can just always walk around with 15 pots (I usually just walk around with 5 and rarely have an issue).
I also have no idea as to why you level grinded and loot gathered. You’ll get a large majority of the weapons and armor from quests and chests, with the occasional drop from an enemy. I also hit 20 between the 3rd and 4th thong, though you’ll more than likely be able to use every piece of equipment by the time your level 18.
What do you mean by “pots”? Anyway, I think the curve is decent; it wasn’t hard at first but it did get harder, and moreso than the other games. I finally had a reason to use grenades and bolts in this one.
‘Pots’ as in potions. Sorry, been playing MMOs too much lately.
You could theoretically walk around with 15 (5 of each healing) and rarely run into an inventory issue, at which point if you did most of the stuff you had was worthless anyway. I just ran with 5 of the highest I could use and probably ran out only 10 or so times the whole game.
I played through on Normal (Still have yet to start on Insane) and didn’t use a single Bolt, and the 2 or so Grenades I used were on accident. Buff pots, I think I used around a dozen the whole game. I’m sure they’ll be much more useful in Insane, but very few people are even going to attempt it let alone progress far into it.
The game is good, but not as good as the first two to be honest. But it is just slightly.
GREAT series
I had so much fun playing this game. I saw that there might be some DLC for it as well. I might even try to do insane mode but I don’t know about that. Normal mode was hard enough.
I thought that the Deathspank games were something completely different from what they are. I had been told it was a 2d flat side scroll cutout game. I’m glad that I finally looked up some game play footage, because they seem like the stuff I love to play.