Bacon. Video games. Who doesn’t love both? Combine the two and you get the mostly entertaining and always funny action-RPG The Baconing.
In the third installment of the DeathSpank series, players find out that instead of destroying all five thongs collected from the previous game, the hero, DeathSpank, has decided to wear all five, accidentally creating AntiSpank. It becomes your task to destroy all five thongs in The Bacon Fire to defeat your newly created nemesis.
While the overall story and idea for the game is fun and interesting, most of the gameplay is not. Sure, it’s fun to attack groups of enemies, but it gets tedious and very repetitive after about the first two levels.
Like any action-RPG mature enough to remember Diablo, one of the highlights of The Baconing is the loot. You’re always picking up a new weapon, armor or potion that will help you with certain bosses or puzzles. It can be overwhelming, but thankfully the developers at HotHead have you covered with sorting buttons and shortcuts to immediately equip you with the best armor that you collect.
DeathSpank moves smoothly around the map, though sometimes the hero gets stuck on environmental objects. The menus can be difficult to navigate at the start of the game, but by the end they seem to make more sense. I wish the menu screen were larger. It’s hard to see what you have in your inventory and what needs to be “ground up” into money when it’s crammed in with so much information.
The Baconing runs with only a few hiccups in frame rate (when in a high-animation area). Each environment is different and mostly engaging, however stagnant gameplay persists: hack and slash your way through the level, gather loot, complete a lengthy puzzle, defeat the boss.
Thankfully, HotHead decided not to mess with the co-op part of this game. While it’s fun to play by yourself, The Baconing is best played with a friend. I know many people want the ability to play co-op online, but this game is great if you have someone sitting next to you laughing along at the dialogue.
Players are introduced to two new second player characters, Bob from Accounting and Tankko. While Bob (a hammerhead shark wearing a business suit) can dive underwater and shoot frickin’ laser beams out from his frickin’ eyes (Dr. Evil anyone?), Tankko can shape shift into a fierce looking spider and trap enemies in his web. Neither of these characters are helpful with healing however, and I found my friend switching back to our trusty character, Steve, as he is a great healer and fast on his feet – both of which you need while playing.
While the writing is funny 80 percent of the time, the other 20 percent feels forced. When receiving quests, sometimes you don’t want a funny and politically incorrect joke, you just want to know what you need to do to move on. It’s that 20 percent that takes you out of the moment and you find yourself not laughing, but groaning.
It is a longer downloadable game, logging in at about six to ten hours, depending on how fast you play and if you complete all of the side missions. At $14.99 on the PlayStation Network and 1200 Microsoft Points on Xbox LIVE, The Baconing can be worth your while if you enjoy an RPG combined with hack and slash repetition.
All in all, I enjoyed playing The Baconing with its inappropriate jokes, amazing animation, and superior looting abilities, but it’s not enough for me to say that it’s a great game with a few missteps. HotHead studios should take longer than six months before coming out with what I hope will be a fourth game that is more like the original, yet is an individual game all on its own.
