Deathspank is a third person action RPG for the PSN. It is set in a fantasy world filled with undead soldiers, dragons, and “stoopid chickens”. You control a knight as he explores the area. The game features cartoon-like, cell shaded graphics similar to something like Fat Princess. There’s also a lot of blood, magical explosions, and decapitated skeletons as you would expect.
The demo threw me right into the world of Deathspank. As you wander around the map, there will be people that you can accept quests from. The first person I approached was an old witch standing in front of her cottage. When you approach someone to talk to, you have several dialogue options. These dialogue trees will be very similar to anyone who has played a fallout or other third person RPG. Most of the lines were very funny and your character delivers them in a very loud and over zealous voice. When I was finally given a quest, I was told to kill 10 chickens and collect their lips. Yes, in this game chickens have lips. When I went back to the witch for a second quest, she gave me another collection quest, except this time I had to find three times as many objects. Instead of completing the quest, I walked around to see who else I could find. Across a bridge I found a little orphan who wanted me to take a package to her grandpa. It was at this point that I was directed to the quest page.
The quest page is very detailed. It tells you progress on every quest you have accepted. If a quest requires you to collect objects, it will tell you how many you currently have. There are also little fortune cookies that you can find across the map that will give you hints on currently active quests. There is also a very detailed character page as well. It tells you all the information on your character you would expect, such as hit point, which items are equipped, etc. There is also stats on each weapon to let you know how much damage it will deal.
Combat in Deathspank is fun and easy. The face buttons each have a different weapon tied to them. Just push the face button and you will use the corresponding weapon. The D-pad also works in the exact same way for items. The current layout for your weapons and items is displayed at the bottom of the screen. The enemies also have their level and health displayed above their heads. When you strike an enemy, or vice-versa, the amount of damage will also pop-up. This is really useful information because there are monsters that are far stronger than you walking around, and if your not careful they will take you down in one hit. If you do happen to get killed, there are outhouses scattered around the map where you will respawn. You will spawn at the closest active outhouse and all you need to do to activate an outhouse is find it, and it will stay active for the rest of the game.
What I saw of Deathspank so far looks very promising, and I look forward to its release on PSN later this year.
