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I often wonder why fantasy settings aren't used more for comedy. It seems like only a few people, Terry Pratchett for instance, have cottoned on to just how easy the traditional elements of the fantasy genre are to parody. If you step back and look objectively at hobbits and quests and magic rings, it's all kind of ridiculous. In the tradition of Overlord, Deathspank pulls no punches in it's painfully hilarious ribbing of the fantasy genre and manages to be a fantastic game along the way.

The short version: Deathspank is an adventure RPG with Diablo style loot gathering and hack and slash action. You can have four weapons equipped to your four face buttons and four potions or power ups equipped to the D Pad with the shoulder buttons handling your map and inventory. Killing bad guys also levels up a purple justice meter that can be used to unleash a powerful attack and later with the use of runes, an elemental attack. For those who can’t be bothered to poke through the several dozen weapons and armour pieces they’ve gathered up after some questing and grinding, accessing your inventory and pulling the left trigger sets you to automatically equip your best armour so you can pawn the rest. Using the money to by relish to coat unicorn food with so you can collect their magical poo which has the best healing ability of any item in the game, this is super dangerous though as unicorn's are extremely vicious and aggressive creatures. And that last sentence pretty much sums up just how great Deathspank is.

Graveyards full of ghouls and skeletons are just one of the many fantasy settings you'll journey through

The simplicity of the game play combined with the hilarity of the dialogue will keep you glued to Deathspank. The character of Deathspank and his dialogue is probably most reminiscent of The Tick (anyone remember The Tick? Come on, The Tick was awesome, spoooon). One of my favourite lines of dialogue was when our hero speaks to the wise hippy tree god in the enchanted forest who comments, "Ah Deathspank, the wind and the rain sing the story of your adventures", to which are hero replies, "finally!". Then there was the lengthy conversation with a cow in which it imparted it's 'bovine wisdom' onto Deathspank. I don't care where you come from, cows are hilarious (and possibly sacred). The comedy comes thick and fast, mostly down to Deathspank’s over blown heroic dialogue but there’s plenty of sly comedy gems hidden away; be sure to read the description of every item you find. It’s not that surprising given the developer’s pedigree, Hothead Games having previously made the Penny Arcade adventure titles.

VIsually the world of Deathspank is an odd mishmash of 3D and 2D. The characters and monsters in the game are all fully rendered 3D sprites and you can move in three dimensions around the landscape, but all the scenery, buildings, trees and signposts, are deliberated set up to look like cardboard cut outs propped up. It gives Deathspank a unique, but very pleasing look that’s easy to navigate.

Yes you're killing an entire monastery of monks, but trust me, they're BAD monks

Like all of this years summer/winter of arcade games (curse you hemisphere!) Deathspank has tapped into some secret pure vein of good old fashioned fun gameplay. It’s just fun to play, smacking, chopping and slashing endlessly at all sorts of bizarre creatures never gets boring. You’re side quests often require you to obtain some strange or offensive item for someone or defeat a monster. There’s a major quest line involving the rescue of some orphans and facing off with the evil Lord Von Prong which is all tied up, literally and figuratively, with Deathspanks enchanted purple thong (underwear not footwear).

Demons can present a challenge, note the bug eyed help of Sparkles the wizard here

A few quests involve solving some adventure style puzzles, combining one item with another in your inventory and with weird miscellaneous objects in the environment to see what works. Most of the puzzles follow a twisted logic that you can figure out if you put all logic and reason aside first, strangely this came pretty easily for me. It’s refreshing to have an adventure game with some puzzles that actually require you to stop and think and don’t broadcast the answer from a mile away. For the hard up in the puzzle ability stakes you can find fortune cookies lying around the place that can be used to give you some generous hints to assist in finishing quests. As with any RPG game, if the baddies down a particular path are giving you a lot of grief and you’re dying frequently, it’s probably a good idea to back track and mop up your side quests before you journey any farther.

The psychedelic freak out of the Enchanted Forest, beware the vicious unicorns

Deathspank can level up to 20 and each rank lets you pick a card to increase a stat such as health, extra damage or the ability to use weapons and armour above your level. But the game is so much fun you’re likely to have mopped up all the side quests and dinged level 20 before the final encounter just because you’re enjoying yourself and not out of some RPG addictive compulsion (not that I'd know about that, ahem). Speaking from experience this is pretty rare for most RPG games; although admittedly Deathspank isn’t the biggest RPG and can be completed, achievements and all, in about eight hours.

A friend can join in as supporting character Sparkles the wizard who can heal Deathspank and shoot magical attacks at enemies. Although the second player doesn’t get any achievements or experience back to their own game for the effort, it’s a fun addition if you’ve got a bored friend or family member on hand.

Not everyone loves a hero, plenty want to spit (whiz and crap) on Deathspank

I can’t find fault with Deathspank from any angle, it seems to effortlessly capture the fun factor that so many more expensive and complex games work hard to capture.. Like Limbo it’s a game no console is complete without this year. Best of all the strange ending of the game will leave you hungry for a sequel in the extended and increasingly weird(er) world of Deathspank. A cartoonish and hilarious RPG that will delight fans, for the pure RPG elements, and haters, for the constant ribbing the whole genre gets, in equal measures. It’s impossible not to play without a stupid grin plastered over your face and for that I can’t recommend it enough. Not that I want you to look stupid, you deserve to enjoy yourself so much that you don’t care if you look stupid.