DeathSpank, Like Diablo With A Sense Of Humour, Hits July

Are you perfectly fine with rainbows in your Diablo III? Then you might like the gameplay and lighthearted approach of Hothead Games’ action-RPG DeathSpank, which marries deep role-playing with broad humour in just a couple of weeks.

EA put a firm date and price on the downloadable action role-playing game today, inking it in the calendar for July 13 for PlayStation Network, July 14th for Xbox Live Arcade at a cost of $US14.99/1200 Microsoft Points. We got to take a whack at DeathSpank’s brand of gameplay and style pre-E3 and thoroughly enjoyed the latest effort from The Secret of Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert.

As the eponymous DeathSpank, we embarked on a small part of the hero’s quest in search of a Spicy Taco. Since DeathSpank believes that every quest on which he embarks could be the epic quest to locate The Artifact, the hunt for that taco had an air of importance.

It was also an opportunity to get DeathSpank a weapon, as he was stripped of his means to defend himself by some nasty ogre types who tossed his equipment into a Dumpster. It was largely a standard fetch quest with flavor. Go here, speak to the taco lady, remember the ingredient requirements, extract Tabasco-flavouring from a nearby pepper and return the spicy taco treasure to a man with an axe wedge into his shoulder.

It was, as DeathSpank promises, all in good fun.

While the questing and action-RPG combat feels like rather standard but deep stuff – Hothead promises hundreds of weapons, armour types and accessories to loot – DeathSpank’s sense of humour may make it shine. It’s two player cooperative questing may make it doubly memorable.

DeathSpank is out early next month, a chance for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners to save orphans and extract the souls of chickens for a nominal fee.