2010-07-27

DeathSpank and Limbo demos

I was contemplating whether I should wait to post until this evening when I got my hands on BlazBlue: Continuum Shift, or if I should make a double-post today to make up for last week. Seems the latter has won out!
DeathSpank is a supposed hero (although everyone else will deny it) seeking The Artifact. What this Artifact does as of yet, no one knows, but looking for it is just what heroes do.
The world itself is cylindrical in shape, giving the world a lovely whimsical feeling of simply running on a sphere as you travel to each quest: trees and landscape simply disappear over the horizon. The landscapes themselves are quite aesthetically pleasing, each having their own feel for the different areas. The humour itself is a little silly, but managed to sneak a laugh out of me every now and again. Voicework left a little to be desired, as dialogue seemed a bit slow and forced, but was still pretty okay.
The challenge is typical of any "quest" type game: talk to a character, kill things/retrieve items/deliver items for them, and return once the quest is finished. The difficulty of combat is about average, if you're levelling up properly. If you're finding it difficult with no healing items, killing some chickens will bag you some meat for easy healing, as long as you don't get attacked while you're in the middle of eating.
The controls are easy to figure out, with a different weapon equipped to the each of the XBAY buttons. The item menu took a little getting used to, as a flurry of items would drop into my inventory from a fight before I had time to check what they were and I had to sort through what was new and what I could get rid of.
This neat little game is available for 1200 points from the XBLA.

Limbo is about a little boy trying to find his sister. He comes across danger, as well as having to solve puzzles to continue his journey.
It's beautiful and rich in depth, despite the minimal graphics. The lack of music leaves a little to be desired, but the added detail of a little gore to an otherwise "sweet" atmosphere is a bonus.
For a puzzle game, I found it a little more difficult than usual with everything being the same. It's not entirely clear what you CAN interact with, and had to fiddle with almost everything to figure out what I should do next.
The controls only consist of 3 things: moving, jumping and interacting with objects. Combining these will get you through the puzzles and out of danger.
I don't really have much to say about this game, as I felt it was another rip on a Flash game I had played before called "Coma". Same graphics style and even a similar story, so this is really nothing new to me.
Limbo is available for download from XBLA for 1200 points.

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