The Baconing

I just love Deathspank and his hillarious jokes!

TL;DR: If you want more DeathSpank and can put up with much higher difficulty and a less interesting world, this game is for you. This is more of a mid-recommendation than a full one, details follow. The Baconing is the third game in the DeathSpank series and the only one not involving the original creative director Ron Gilbert (who also famously created Monkey Island). The previous 2 entries were light-hearted comedy action RPGs with a unique setting combining anachronistic elements, acerbic humour and a solid (if repetitive) gameplay formula. The fun loop from the previous games consisted of a crazily over-the-top bumbling fool of a main character (DeathSpank) who quests to help people (sometimes unwittingly doing the contrary) while chasing ridiculous Macguffins. Gear would drop from enemies as you explore the world where new themed locations would regularly come up to advance the plot. The latter was simple but fun and the first game especially nailed the addictive just one more quest gameplay. The second game was harder and had a bloated number of sidequests but still fun while completing the original plot with multiple endings. This third game however suffers significantly from the departure of the originals' creative director. The Baconing replaces the occasionally dark yet goofy world of the previous games with consistently drab environments and misses the mark immensely when it comes to the writing. DeathSpank is actively evil several times instead of mostly bungling his way around and the characters are almost all bad in some way. The themed locations lack the cheerfulness of the previous games and the plot isn't even properly resolved by the end of the game which promises DLC and sequels that never came. Thankfully, the proper ending in the second entry helps reduce the sting. It's easy to write off the simple plot of the previous games but this entry proves that there's a deceptive depth to that apparent simplicity as they balanced fun with social commentary instead of going post-apocalyptic and openly grim with forced comedy like this one. The voice acting is surprisingly lacking for some prominent characters although the main character and several side characters are great. The music is fine although mostly recycled, as is much of the gear and models. The gameplay is also lacking in innovation but more of the same wouldn't be an issue with the fun core loop of this series, except this entry has a big issue: difficulty. The game's difficulty is significantly ramped up and at seems like it was more balanced for co-op (I played solo). It's easy to die in most battles and the difficulty spikes are even more annoying than in the second game. The game seems to want to encourage more tactical gameplay but doesn't adjust the other mechanics to help with that. Switching equipment and potions should have been easier to negotiate the harder, more varied mobs but the controls are as limited as the previous entries (where the game was properly tuned for that) and it makes the ability to mix and match annoying as you need to switch loadout mid-battle from a menu. When you get used to it, the steady feeling of progress from the better previous entries returns somewhat but that is also sometimes stymied by irritatingly long segments without checkpoints. The game's balance doesn't seem like it was given enough time to cook and it should have spent longer in development. I know this may seem like a non-recommendation but despite these many flaws, the fact is this game still provides more DeathSpank gameplay. The relatively short length (about 12 hours) and getting to play some more as DeathSpank still has a fun factor for fans. Fans of the series hankering for more can somewhat enjoy this. Anyone else though, play the first 2 games and ignore this one. I'm tenuously recommending this as I like the series but this game did test my patience several times.