DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue Message Board

Wired recently spoke with Ron Gilbert, creator of the Monkey Island and DeathSpank series, and the conversation turned to the latter's conventional hack-and-slash combat. Though he didn't stick around long enough to guide the final releases of this year's dual-developed DeathSpank games, Gilbert was their lead designer and said, if he could do it over, he'd likely add more depth to the combat. Instead of just "hacking through a bunch of enemies," he suggested "treating combat as if it was a puzzle to be solved [...] might have helped people a little bit with not just having to button-mash their way through battles."

Gilbert cited Dragon Age as an example, "not in its turn-based nature," but "more of the intellectual element" of requiring some strategy to combat. Perhaps that's not the best example. How about Diablo 3? That's shaping up to be a hack-and-slash game that introduces a satisfying level of strategy through its myriad spells and tactics. Now, if you were to marry such fine-tuned gameplay with Unicorn poop, you're talking "Game of the Year." Easy. Next time, Mr. Gilbert?

World's Funniest downloadable hero throws down with Santa and his mighty red thong in an all new adventure on PC.

The virtuous thongs of DeathSpank's sequel will arrive on PC and Mac later this year, EA has announced. DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue will launch on PC November 30, with a Mac release following on December 14 (the original DeathSpank will be released for Mac the same day as ToV -- that's a lot of spanking!). Like the console versions, Thongs of Virtue will cost $14.99.

DeathSpank: ToV comes with two pieces of free DLC at launch: "Snowy Mountain Dungeon" and "Sidekick Tankko: Half-man, half-spider, and all awesome." If you absolutely can't wait for next Tuesday, a minigame on the DeathSpank website ("DeathSpank: Spank This!") offers you a chance to win free stuff. One grand prize winner will get "a squawkin' chicken, a signed DeathSpank poster, a free copy of DeathSpank, and an Intel Core i7-870." All prize winners, actually, will get that squawkin' chicken, which leads us to believe there's a very large squawkin' chicken population at Hothead. That must make it hard to concentrate on programming.

#deathspankthongsofvirtue Signs of the worldwide economic downturn, known by some as the Great Recession, are nearly absent from modern video games. So it came as a surprise to me when one my assignments in a new video game was to foreclose on homes. More »

#review DeathSpank: Thongs Of Virtue is video game deja vu if deja vu involved feeling like you've done the thing you're doing before — but maybe not ever before in a boat. More »

Are you looking for a set of tunes to listen to while vanquishing scores of foes in search of marginally improved equipment? Sounds like you need the Jeff Tymoschuk-composed soundtracks to DeathSpank and its follow-up, Thongs of Virtue. As revealed on the game's site, the soundtracks might be released for free if enough fans "Like" Hothead Games' official Facebook page. Oh, and in this case, Hothead has quantified "enough fans" as "4,000 fans."

At the time of this writing, the page is currently sitting at a little under 700 members, so you've got a ways to go before the albums are released. Still, if there's anything we know about you guys, it's that you aren't quitters. You're not quitters, are you? You don't seem like quitters.

[Thanks, Patrick]

You deserve another 'Spanking.

Even if it seems oddly soon for a sequel to DeathSpank, it might be worth your while to grab Thongs of Virtue soon rather than letting a more appropriate interim pass. EA announced that those who purchase the followup during the week of launch (September 20-27 on PSN, September 22-28 on XBLA) will get two free items of DLC.

After that period, the "Snowy Mountain Dungeon" and playable co-op character "Sidekick Tankko" will be sold for $2.99/240 Microsoft Points and $0.99/80 Microsoft Points, respectively. That's not much, but it's certainly more than the nothing the DLC costs now. As a side note, now we understand why Thongs of Virtue is a "sequel" and not an "episode." Buying DLC for one part of an episodic game seems weird, but DLC for a separate downloadable game is par for the course.

Greetings citizens! This is Chris Mitchell from Hothead Games brimming over with tales of DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue!

DeathSpank: Thongs Of Virtue is our wonderful, full-figured sequel to DeathSpank but with more and better everything. Of course you and everyone you associate with will know that DeathSpank is our hilarious, exciting, highly rated action-RPG mixed with adventure gameplay. Some describe the series as “Diablo meets Monkey Island” but I’d rather describe it as “DeathSpank-Like”.

No doubt by now you’ve played through your multiple copies of the original DeathSpank game (thanks for buying those by the way) and wonder how we can possibly top the tooth and nail action? We wondered too but luckily we had a brainstorm. We took DeathSpank’s patented sword fighting action and added….guns! Guns in a video game? It’s crazy I know, but in the course of his new adventure entirely too many grenades, guns and bombs will be used in the search for Justice. Statistically speaking at least some of them will even be used correctly.

Oh and speaking of adventure, DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue has even more adventure gameplay woven in with the slashing, bullet-shooting exciting combat. Many brains will be teased, fortune cookies opened and possibly internet FAQs consulted by our players in the name of a puzzling good time. DeathSpank: TOV was made at the same time as DeathSpank so we were able to take lessons learned on DeathSpank and craft an even better game with deeper adventure gameplay.

Naturally his enemies are pretty well armed themselves with heavy machine guns, airstrikes and the latest in monocle technology to keep things nice and perky. The enemies are far more varied themselves and the bosses (if I may be so bold) are just excellent. We now have many times the number of big bosses that must die at your hand.

This sequel also gave us a nice chance to go all Michael Bay on things. Everything is bigger and more explody. You get a far larger world to adventure in and incredible environments and holiday-themed terrors that need to be filled with holes. There’s more quests that need to be done and more varied quests as well I should add. Oh and what’s this? A pirate ship? Yes DeathSpank gets to go a-plundering thanks to his ally Captain Taint, scourge of various seas.

Naturally DeathSpank’s not the sort of guy to adventure alone, friends of yours (or mine, I won’t judge) can jump in and jump out of co-op action using classic Sparkles or the all new Steve! Steve Von Prong was raised by multi-level marketing ninjas in the deadly ways of the unicorn. If you figure out what that means, please let us know as we’re quite curious.

Gamers who purchase DeathSpank: T.O.V. in its first week will also receive two pieces of free downloadable content: the Snowy Mountain Dungeon, a terrifying, ice-covered dungeon frozen in the North Pole where evil enemies of ice, flesh and terror dwell and a new playable co-op character, Sidekick Tankko. Half-man, half-spider and all awesome, Sidekick Tankko is a deadly warrior who spews mighty clouds of poison and entraps enemies with his inescapable web attacks.

That’s all I’ve got for now but I await questions! Let me have it internet and you will have answers in return. They may not be good answers but you get what you pay for around here.

DeathSpank's humor was one of the things that made it popular enough to warrant a quick sequel, and since that humor was most often driven by the wacky characters, Thongs of Virtue won't lack for funny faces, either. Hothead sent along some profiles of the bosses and allies you'll be meeting as you hunt down the six thongs (there were nine, apparently, but marketing stuck its big nose in and shortened the thong total by three), and you can browse through them in the gallery below.

Our favorite? "Steve," as pictured above. Look, the dude was raised by ninjas and rides a tiny unicorn -- your argument is irrelevant. In fact, is it too late to change the name of the game? Steve: Thongs of Virtue has a nice ring to it, too.

Take a peek at your upcoming adversaries in Thongs of Justice.

#clips What's all this about powerful, mythic thongs created by an master craftsman? More »

When DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue was first introduced, we were baffled by the mysterious origin of the game's various undergarments of legend. Now that we know where they're from -- thanks to this latest trailer, care of PAX -- well, we're just as baffled. Head past the break and see for yourself.

Rescuing orphans was only the beginning, now there's pirates and aliens and Santa, oh my!