DeathSpank: Thongs Of Virtue Review

I first tried DeathSpank years ago and gave up on it early on, because the advertised humor and co-op gameplay were not that great. Player 2 plays a very limited role, and it felt like the majority of the humor boiled down to, “His name’s DeathSpank! Isn’t that funny? He wears a thong! Ha, ha, ha!” But after giving the game another try as a single-player experience, I grew to really like it. The joke writing improves a lot the further you get into the game, and the action RPG mechanics remain fun and engaging throughout. So of course I immediately jumped into the Thongs of Virtue sequel after beating the first game. Alas, the sequel is not as good, but I still liked it enough to play ’til the end.

The main problem with Thongs of Virtue is that it simply tries to do too much. Where DeathSpank 1 excelled at being a riff on the fantasy genre, DeathSpank 2 lampoons everything. It’s got World War II soldiers, pirates, robots, old Western saloons, space aliens, and Santa’s reindeer. I understand wanting to go all out for a sequel, but the downside is that there’s no unifying theme. It’s just a bunch of random ideas all thrown in the same pot. Because of this hodgepodge of themes, there’s a bigger variety of items and weapons. Unfortunately, they fill up your inventory super fast. Inventory management wasn’t a big deal in DeathSpank 1, but it’ll consume a lot of your time in the sequel.

The sequel is also harder in general, especially in the first few areas. Coming straight from the first game, the difficulty spike is somewhat welcome. However, what makes the game harder is that too many enemies have long-range weapons. I was getting really frustrated trying to escape from every other flamethrower, machine gun, or bow and arrow. It wasn’t until I found a decent long-range weapon myself in the form of a raygun that the difficulty leveled out, and I started really enjoying the latter half of the game. So yes, there’s still plenty of fun to be had in this DeathSpank sequel. But the entry price for said fun requires you to have a love for the first game and a willingness to tough out a somewhat annoying opening act.

Reviewer

Clark
I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.

Published by

Clark

I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.