Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue Member Review for the Xbox360

The Good: More funny and witty dialog, new weapons and armor, whole new areas to explore

The Bad: Consuming food constantly is downright annoying, plays and feels exactly like the last game, not enough quest variety

The first DeathSpank gave us some solid RPG action with really funny dialog and wit. Thongs of Virtue is the direct sequel, but feels more like an expansion. The game is exactly the same, but with new content. Unfortunately, the game also carries over the same problems from the first game so not a single thing was fixed or changed. The story is about DeathSpank trying to retrieve three thongs from three evil bosses, but in between you can do about 150 side quests.

The game is broken up in several areas just like the first game. You can warp around the wold via outhouses and you will revive at the nearest one if you die. As you do quests for various people you pick up more powerful armor and weapons along the way. There are new armor and weapons in this game, but everything else is the same. The same food, potions, and other little tidbits like chests. Some chests can only be opened with special keys that have to be fitted from a locksmith though. There are more areas to explore in this game which means it's a bit longer. You can probably finish most of the game in about 15 hours, or 20 if you are slow.

Running around and whacking enemies is the name of the game, but only certain ones can be beaten when you are a higher level. The level cap is 20 again, but it takes a bit longer to get there this time around. There are more characters to talk to which means hours of funny and strange dialog. There's even an area where you can steer a pirate ship and go to little islands to get quest items as well.  I actually found the fortune cookie hints to be more useful this time around and rarely needed to use a walkthrough. The last game had poor hints and even the quest descriptions were pretty poor. At least now most of them tell you where the quest giver is so you can go back to them without having to wander around.

The biggest issues I had with the last game still exist. You can only have 5 health potions at a time so you have to rely on consuming food items. This takes forever and some times you will fail if enemies have projectile weapons because DeathSpank will stop eating if hit. This made combat drag out and become irritating, which just so happens to be the case here to. Most enemies that are around your level will kill you almost instantly if you get ganged up on, so running around in circles eating food is just annoying. Why this wasn't addressed is beyond me, but it needs to be in the third game or I actually won't play it. The game is also full of repetitive fetch quests that I didn't really think about in the first game. There's needs to be more variety in the gameplay and/or quests because a third helping of this would just be way too much.

Overall, Thongs of Virtue is a fun action RPG for fans of the first game. People who didn't like the first game will hate this one to because nothing was really changed or improved. Come for the witty and funny dialog, but don't expect anything spectacular or extraordinary.

(Based on PC version)