By Quintin Smith on October 27th, 2010 at 3:41 pm.
Ron Gilbert’s comedy Diablo-alike, Deathspank, is out now on Steam for £9.99! I mean, technically it was also out yesterday on Steam for £9.99, but it’s RPS’s firm belief that news gets better with age. You know, like fine wine, or the Bond films of Roger Moore.
I played DeathSpank when it first came out on Xbox Live and really enjoyed myself. The jokes are hit and miss, but come at you in such relentless volleys that you can end up doing a fair bit of giggling. Combat and progression were tighter than I was expecting, too. Ye olde trailere after the jump.
Shame there’s no PC demo available yet. There’s a trial version on Xbox Live, course, if you swing that way.
27/10/2010 at 15:49 Adryuu says:
Is it just the Orphans of Justice part? No news about Thongs of Virtue?
27/10/2010 at 15:56 Quintin Smith says:
No Thongs of Virtue. I’d guess it’s probably still at least a month away.
27/10/2010 at 16:05 Adryuu says:
Oh, I see, thanks for the reply. I played the Orphans thing in PSN and I was wondering how it would be with mouse and all. Controls very well with gamepad though, and runs fine in PS3 (in X360 too, I suppose) at 1080p with a smooth framerate, only with very occassional tearing.
Haven’t played Shank though, and it was supposed to be bundled with this for some offer, don’t know if it was only for preorder or still applies.
27/10/2010 at 19:32 Malcolm says:
Only played an hour or so but mouse control seemed pretty good actually: WASD to move and mouse to aim/fire/bludgeon is fairly intuitive. Thought I was going to have to use a gamepad but haven’t been moved to bother so far which is a fairly good sign.
27/10/2010 at 15:50 scottossington says:
Love the game. Just bought it yesterday and it has a wheelbarrow full of charm. Its well worth the $15 Canadian that I payed for it. Long live McGiver
27/10/2010 at 15:52 Schaulustiger says:
I only played an hour yesterday, but I felt pretty entertained. The voice acting is great, the story so far is hilarious and I overall I had a fun time looting and talking. It feels like it was developed with a console in mind, though, but it controls just fine with Mouse + Keyboard.
27/10/2010 at 15:58 apricotsoup says:
Bought this and shank on pre-order.
Next up we need costume quest.
27/10/2010 at 16:10 Whiskey Jak says:
Not sure if it was mentioned before, but Shank is also out (not as entertaining as DeathSpank imho, but different people, different tastes).
27/10/2010 at 16:12 nk says:
For reasons beyond my understanding, neither DeathSpank nor Shank are available in my country (france). Damn ! I am not sure I am motivated enough to try and bypass the whole region-lock thingy by using the gift system.
27/10/2010 at 17:02 zergrush says:
Isn’t there a way to bypass it by going directly to the us store or something like that? I remember doing it to get Bioshock, but can’t remember exaclty how ~.~
27/10/2010 at 17:26 nk says:
Well you can force the steam store region to UK in your browser by appending “?cc=uk” to the url for example, but I believe the accounts are region locked too. So you would have to create another account, probably pay with paypal to avoid excessive bank fees, then gift the game to your main account. And I am not even sure it would work.
So, I think I’ll just keep my money and just play something else…
27/10/2010 at 18:38 Kid A says:
Try the data smuggling thread in the forums. Sure someone there will be able to lend a hand.
28/10/2010 at 04:17 Miko says:
I’m pretty sure accounts aren’t region locked – I VPNed in through Colorado to unlock the copy of New Vegas I’d bought before the official European release date and that worked fine.
28/10/2010 at 17:17 Saiko Kila says:
Steam accounts are not country locked for sure – Steams tries to identify your location the moment you pay but not the moment you play (well, it locates you but it doesn’t prevent from playing or even installing the game then). So you can also just cross the border to purchase. (However, sometimes it happens that you can’t pay with your usual paypal account, credit card or whatever you have registered to Steam account, when you are abroad.) Unfortunately, Steam is constantly improving with routines detecting your true location, though in my opinion they are not as good as PayPal’s methods :)
27/10/2010 at 16:32 Spencer says:
Roger Moore was always awesome. Now Timothy Dalton gets better with age. I defy you to tell me that “The Living Daylights” is a bad movie!
Awesome cello-sled? Yes, please.
27/10/2010 at 16:47 Matthew says:
Dalton is my mum’s second-favourite Bond – after Connery, of course. Being an amateur cellist I always had a soft spot for Dalton due to that very scene.
27/10/2010 at 16:58 kyyninen says:
It is still my firm belief that Timothy Dalton is the James Bond. Living Daylights being the first Bond-movie I remember seeing might have something to do with it, but nevertheless I think that there is something quite unique in good ol’ Tim. Some desperate, delightfully brutal edge that even Daniel Craig seems to be missing.
He was brilliant in Hot Fuzz, too.
27/10/2010 at 19:55 StingingVelvet says:
The Living Daylight is a GREAT Bond movie. Of course, License to Kill is a terrible one… so he evens out to meh.
28/10/2010 at 07:56 Margo says:
Dalton played Bond by the book. His movies were made at a time when AIDS got a lot of attention. Therefore, Timothy’s Bond was not promiscuous as previous ones. Too many Bond fans were disappointed because Dalton’s Bond was not a “himbo”. Timothy Dalton modeled his Bond from Ian Fleming’s descriptions of the character. His realistic darker Bond foreshadowed Craig who got all the credit for his so-called new depiction of Bond. Timothy is the best actor to ever play Bond and his Bond’s made a significant contribution to the series. Be sure to watch Timothy this Monday night at 8:00 P. M. on ABC’s “Chuck”. He is playing a parody of Bond.
27/10/2010 at 16:32 Fatbubba says:
Bought this one on the console when it first came out. I loved every minute of it even if I’m a bit bummed about the fact that it actually did also come out for the pc. For that reason I’m not buying thongs of virtue till it gets a PC release as well.
27/10/2010 at 16:33 Bayemon says:
I immediately am tempted to go and order this game based on the title “Deathspank” without reading so much as one word of any review on it.
27/10/2010 at 17:14 V. Profane says:
Deathspank: The Spank That Kills
27/10/2010 at 16:42 Vodka & Cookies says:
The sequel which is already out [amazingly] on PSN is actually much better then the first game in several ways but yeah the first is a fun game overall.
27/10/2010 at 16:49 N'Al says:
How so?
I found the first game to be vaguely amusing, but not as fun(ny) as I’d hoped it would be. Didn’t stop me from plonking down cash for ToV, regardless.
But hearing the second game being better than the first certainly sound encouraging – and justifies my purchase. ;-)
27/10/2010 at 16:53 Spooty says:
Best add this and Shank to my October Bought-fest list…
27/10/2010 at 17:55 scottossington says:
evidently shank is only 3 hours long, so not sure if its worth $15 canadian dollars. Go Littlest hobo!!!
27/10/2010 at 21:52 ScubaMonster says:
Yeah I heard bad things about Shank.
27/10/2010 at 23:07 CreepingDeath says:
I feel I need to chip in here. Shank is short yes, but in my opinion it is the better of the two games. In Shank the combat is the central element of the game, not the levels, so if you enjoy the combat you can always just go back and replay it. It also has a seperate campaign for (local) co-op, so assuming that is around the same length thats a 6 hour game. Add another 4 or 5 hours for trying to beat it on harder difficulty and getting unlockable costumes (if you are in to that) and I’d say its worth the money.
DeathSpank on the other hand is a mildly amusing diablo clone that has me constantly thinking of going back to Shank while I play it :P
27/10/2010 at 17:12 Pat' says:
Do you think digital distribution makes it too easy for developers to reach an international audience? it seems Hothead Games think the same. ‘Cause I can’t purchase the game in France.
27/10/2010 at 17:28 nk says:
Honestly, I think it is EA’s decision. And if it is not ; well you cannot really go wrong blaming the publisher now, can you ?
27/10/2010 at 17:21 SmallGods says:
I’ve been off work ill the last 3 days, and got this…yesterday morning? Slightly ahamed to say that by this afternoon I’d completed it, maxed out the gear, and got every Steam achievment…only thing I didn’t find was 4 of those pesky tin cans.
Thats not to say for a second that its a particuarly short game, far from it; more than I am ashamed of my gaming binge, of the likes not seen since my student days.
Also, a refreshingly large amount of injokes, nods and winks in there, from a suprisingly large range of sources!
27/10/2010 at 17:55 Travis says:
I blew through both games in a dangerous-long binge too. I found the ‘humor’ dreadful, but the just-one-more-quest gameplay was very compulsive.
27/10/2010 at 22:16 SmallGods says:
Hmmm, I chose to take the humour as deliberately bad, and as such conversely, funny in a roundabout way! I admit there are few laugh-out-loud moments, but several groan-a-long comments and scenarios, and a gentle ribbing of all over the top action RPGs nicely slotted in there.
Its the little things that got me, such as the not-quite-the-best-gear being the Epic set, and then the one after that being Dragonslayer. Because everyone knows that no matter how epic you may be, Dragonslayers are goddamn badass.
If I had to take a shot at anything, it would be the prompting as to where to go next; too many times I found myself slightly off course, then stumbling across things that I should have done agggges before, mopping up at lvl.19
28/10/2010 at 04:14 TheTingler says:
“The door’s protected with a magic seal.”
“Magic seal? You fiend! Enslaving defenseless circus animals!”
I laughed pretty hard at that…
27/10/2010 at 19:18 Sly Boots says:
Ok, so I bought this today, tried to load it up and as soon as the game loads my monitor turns itself off and I get a message saying I need to adjust the signal timings. Never seen that messge before, what the heck is it and how do I do it?
27/10/2010 at 21:15 Matthew says:
Means it’s running in a resolution/refresh rate combination your monitor doesn’t support. You might try fiddling with the defaults for refresh rates in the graphics card driver. (If you have a really large monitor, it might not directly support the lower standard resolutions and such).
27/10/2010 at 21:17 Matthew says:
Also it might be defaulting to a widescreen res on your fullscren monitor, or vice versa.
28/10/2010 at 07:55 Sly Boots says:
Hurrah, downloaded the new drivers nVidia released two days ago, and as if by magic it works now.
The guy voicing the main character – is he the same one who did The Tick?
27/10/2010 at 20:28 the wiseass says:
There should be a “Wot I think” for this game and Shank. MAKE IT SO! /patrickstewardimpersonation
27/10/2010 at 20:58 Riaktion says:
I have this on 360… and meh. Which is dissapointing.
Might be better on PC…. NEED A DEMO.
Hoping it would feel torchlight-esk on PC
27/10/2010 at 22:20 SmallGods says:
Due to the WASD to move and mouse to face a direction, it almost felt a bit like…whatsicalled…Robotron? Oh god, please someone help me think of a newer version of that style, I’ve gone braindead..
Pretty good though all said and done, nice and sharp art style too.
28/10/2010 at 22:45 Riaktion says:
Thanks man…. however still need a demo as someone who already owns the thing :o)
28/10/2010 at 01:23 HYPERPOWERi says:
DeathSpank has usurped my free time since the purchase. Making steady progress saving those pesky orphans (even the redheads!).
The most potent healing potion that I can make right now involves buying laxative relish and smearing it over some turnips in the magical forest, then luring a rabid unicorn to the turnip and waiting for it to take a dump. Its poop heals massive (for the moment) HP, is rainbow coloured and, according to the description, tastes like innocence.
Also, the visuals are stunning.
28/10/2010 at 11:22 ed says:
I’ve only played a little but I’m I’m really digging it. Full of character. So glad it made it to the PC or else I’d die knowing there was a Ron Gilbert game I never played (yeah, I’ve even played all the Humongous Entertainment stuff.. My 3 year old nephew LOVES Pajama Sam). I just hope Double Fine ultimately put all their stuff out on PC too.
29/10/2010 at 17:35 Kevin says:
Guys , can ANYONE PLEASE tell me how to get this on pc in France ? , I want the english version not the french version >.> , I really love this game ( saw videos of it ) and my friends from sweden play it , Anyone have a clue how I can get this ?
24/11/2010 at 03:05 FormerlyMQ says:
You should look up places that let you VPN into the US and use the connection from that location – basically what you would be doing is using your internet connection from france to connect to a computer in the US, of which tells steam or whatever website you are going to that you are connecting from the US computer, as opposed to the french one. Does that make sense? You can also look up the TOR network and see if that will work. It will be slower, but will get the job done.
You are basically trying to spoof your internet address location, fooling websites to think you arent from france!