Thongs of Virtue is part of a video game revival in which death is a regular and relatively minor occurrence. You’ll die often, but it’s never more than five seconds before our hero pops out of the nearest outhouse as fresh as a daisy.

 

 

It’s a move away from the recharging health model that is the vogue for modern shooters. The use of stylised graphics on powerful hardware leaves a lot of processing power left over, allowing respawn times to be kept mercifully short. This setup allows the developers to create encounters that are challenging, but not frustrating.

 

 

For all the varied equipment in Thongs of Virtue, the gameplay lacks a certain finesse. There’s a combo system that builds up as you use multiple weapons and a Justice meter which unleashes a powerful strike once full. Still, you’ll probably find yourself mashing buttons ferociously rather than carefully timing your hits. From the first sword swing to the last bazooka blast, crunching through enemies never gets old, which is a considerable achievement considering how much combat there is in Thongs of Virtue.

 

This is due in no small part to the way the game places all of your conflict in context. You never need to grind enemies for levels, as there’s always some quest or other to be doing. For a 1200 point game, Thongs of Virtue has a massive amount of content. Even if many of the missions are glorified fetch quests, each has its own well-written characters and awards a new piece of glittery loot.

 

 

A good chunk of these side quests are necessary to progress to the next area. The game doesn’t do a very good job of indicating which quests feed into others and whether or not you are locked out from completing a certain job at any given time. Quests are lumped, often inaccurately, into either ‘Important’ or ‘Unimportant’ sections, with many of the main story missions requiring a set of ancillary tasks to be fulfilled. This is the kind of interface crease that would have been ironed out in a full blown sequel.

 

 

With Gilbert having left Hothead to work for his former underling, Tim Schafer at Double Fine, this may well be the final outing for DeathSpank. Still, with around 15 hours of gameplay and a billion years of recorded dialogue to enjoy, "DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue" is a worthwhile swan-song that takes a satisfyingly long time to play out.

 

 

 

 

+ Hours of funny dialogue with great voice-acting