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In one memorable exchange in the most recent TV series of Game of Thrones, the brutish warrior known as the Hound suggests that the only people who bother to name their swords are "c***s". But we video game players usually leave our weapons nameless not through virtue but through a plain lack of resources: there aren't enough names in the world to bestow on the endless supply of swords and guns that pass through our virtual palms. (The Master Swords and Klobbs of our world have to be uniquely good, terrible or recurrent before a christening.)With so much combat going on in video games, designers turn not to names but to unusual objects to make their arsenals stand out. There's Phantasy Star Online's frying pan, Perfect Dark's laptop gun, Kingdom Heart's massive key bludgeon, Saints Row 4's dubstep gun and Bayonetta's weaponised hairdo. Dead Rising is a series of games that revolves not around zombies so much as unlikely weaponry. I'm not sure if a video game protagonist has wielded a spade before, but they've certainly never named themselves after one.
Shovel Knight wields the spade like it was a sword. It would be a purely cosmetic affect were it not for the fact that, every now and again, he uses it to dig up treasure from the mole-hill earth deposits left around the game's stages, or to knock padlocks from treasure chests. It also provides a useful downward attack whereby the diminutive knight stands on the shovel's blade and bounces on the ground as if using a pogo-stick. Elsewhere, however, this is a routine, if pleasingly brisk and easy-going, tribute to the action platform games of the Super Nintendo era: a period piece with few features beyond its widescreen aspect ratio that betray its contemporary development.
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