Deathspank, just the demo, thanks.

First up is Deathspank:

I was pretty excited for Deathspank since it's a cheap hack-n-slash slash RPG that was supposed to be rather witty. I downloaded the demo and fired it up. I was almost instantly disappointed. The first thing I was treated to was a woman talking endlessly about some legend. At first I couldn't decide if she was being serious or sarcastic. I decided she was being serious because, well, there was no voice acting involved in her speech. I've heard more voice inflection in the original Resident Evil. The game didn't get any better after that...

The gameplay is pretty cookie cutter and the story is about as thin as anyone could possibly write a story. And that's all fine because I was there to play a simple hack-n-slash game with some comedy. If the gameplay was great then that would be a bonus, but nothing I'd expect from a cheap downloadeable game.

Okay, the game is starting, I don't have to listen to that terrible dialogue anymore. Run around, shoot crap. Save in an outhouse. I'm on board with that. Then it's off to talk to some witch. Oh, no! It's that voice again! But this time it's worse because the voice actor... nay, person for Deathspank talks in a monotonous hero voice the entire time. It sounds a lot like they're trying to go for The Tick from the animated series, but with a monotone voice. I think William Shatner would could have given this guy any number of pointers to improve his game.

I got through the VERY PAINFUL conversation which was filled with what could have been great puns and ironies if they had any voice talent. Perhaps the director is to blame, I don't know. I went off on the first mission and when I came back I had to shut down the game because I just couldn't take listening to their semi robotic voices any longer.

The gameplay was nothing noteworthy. Each of the action buttons was linked to a weapon. One or more (I'm assuming) can be assigned a purple "Weapon of Justice" that, when the justice meter is charged, you can activate its ability, which is generally some sort of kill field. Weapons can have the classic elemental affinities and you are able to find "1000's" of pieces of armor and weapons throughout the game.

I would not play this game if it were free.