Brütal Legend
Brütal Legend is an action-adventure that marries visceral action combat with open-world freedom. Set in a universe somewhere between Lord of the Rings and Spinal Tap, it’s a fresh take on the action/driving genre, which in this case is full of imitation cover bands, demons intent on enslaving humanity and Heavy metal tunes. Featuring the talents of comedian, actor and musician, Jack Black as super roadie Eddie Riggs, as well as cameos by some of the biggest names in metal music it's a wild ride in the belly of the beast that is not to be missed by gamers and Metalheads alike. .caption { font-family: Verdana, Helvetica neue, Arial, serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; } ul.indent { list-styl...
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Let me start this review by saying I really wanted to like this game. Being a huge fan of previous Tim Schafer games and a long time metal aficionado I had high hopes. I even pre-ordered the game from Amazon which is rare for me. I give the preface since someone without the same expectations might enjoy it more.
The Good:
Story, Soundtrack, Voice Acting, Artwork, Humor, Metal References and Credits
All of the above are incredibly good. From the introduction through the credits the production values and choices the team made were excellent, within character, and true to intent. I liked the credits which is usually a pet peeve of mine. Rather than drag them out and force you to watch for 10+ minutes (and tempting you to quit out), they went along at a good clip. The soundtrack is well balanced with old and new, major (Ozzy, Scorpions, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest) and less well known but excellent (Ministry) artists, and styles from melodic to death growls (not a fan personally). The Legends and overall storyline are quite entertaining and well thought out.
The Bad:
Length, Flow, Gameplay, and Achievements
The game is very short. Unless you want to spend lots of time after the main story on either hunting through the environment for missed objects (without any map indication or “object finder”) or want to play the pseudo-RTS online multi-player, you will be lucky to get more than 10 hours of gameplay out of this game. For a next gen price of $60, the entertainment/price ratio doesn’t work out (and is one of the reasons for the 3 stars.) The flow of the game is somewhat disappointing as the major story points are somewhat disjoint and don’t always flow smoothly together. The achievements frustrate me as >60% of them are from either the endless object search or the multi-player component. I don’t have a problem with some tedium for attaining a full 1000 points, but I really feel a majority of the points should be achievable in playing the main game reasonably carefully. This is one of those games where the achievements feel set up to force the game to be artificially longer rather than to add to your enjoyment. Finally there is the gameplay itself. Another review (sorry I don’t remember the reference) stated it best. In having the open-world/action/driving/RTS game models, the game is really a “Jack (Black) of all trade and master of none”. None of the modes are bad but none of them are good. Taken together the whole isn’t greater than the sum of the parts. The enjoyment in the game is from the story, the world, the soundtrack, the humor, the metal, and the artwork. The mechanics don’t add to the game.
Bottom Line:
Worth a rent or buying a used copy, but with all the holiday games there is better value out there. I hope TS continues to make games though and the next one has the publicity/plish of Brutal Legend but is more like Psychonauts/Grim Fandago in fun.
Nutshell: Good game, but not great.
This game was originally intended to be an RTS game, but it shed more and more of those aspects as Double Fine focused on the story as it developed. Which is great, but they didn’t go far enough. While the solo missions are great, the “stage battle” segments are awkward, and the pacing immediately after the defeat of Lionwhyte is forced. “Three Months” later and yet we’re not allowed to explore the new area within that time? Just ugly.
At this point, I grew frustrated enough that I started over am making sure I get all the fire tribute extras I can before I get to this part.
While it’s a good game and a great story concept, it’s not quite an open world or an RTS, and suffers for it. If they’d focused on the story, ditched the RTS and made the gameplay more GTA-ish, it would have totally melted my face.
First off, this game pokes fun at current “metal” trends while attempting to tell a story worthy of the 70s metal bands that meshed mythology and modern culture. The game succeeds, in my opinion, in just about everything it sets out to do, and does it so well that it makes the endeavor of this mixed-genre game look natural and easy to accomplish.
You can’t discuss this game without the tongue-in-cheek-yet-serious storyline. The quirky characters and the fact that this is all being done in over-the-top fashion makes it hard to take seriously, but that hint of humor is what lends the game’s story its sense of urgency. If the game took itself seriously and didn’t play these over-the-top characters for laughs, it would become tedious and overwrought. The fact that they copped to their own camp value is what keeps it from being pretentious.
The game itself is actually a realization of Action games, Exploration/Free Roam games, and Real-Time Strategy. Fans of one or two should have no problem with this game (though people who dislike RTS will find this game least agreeable as most major plot points revolve around RTS battles.) You drive around the landscape in your upgradeable car, doing open-world missions and races. If you upgrade your car for weapons, you can also shoot things instead of hopping out of the car to fight people (which, oddly enough, my axe kills things faster than lighting something on fire, shooting it with a chaingun, running it over, then backing up over it.) Some of the missions will see you fighting things solo, but this is rare. You will usually have minions helping you out (similar to Dynasty Warriors.)
Finally, the big thing is the RTS element. While it couches it as a “battle of the bands” kind of rockshow, it is a serious (if a little bare-bones) strategy battle. In true Rock-God fashion, you have to play some epic riffs and get your hands dirty leading your troops for the most part, and you can either fly around the battlefield or take your car (which is a bit of a disappointment, as stated above, for the damage it does compared to a few whacks with your axe.) to explore your options and set waypoints. Each unit can also be “teamed” with to create a different or enhanced effect and, later, you can upgrade your main base and your basic units as well.
For all the wonderful setting and awesome music (which, admittedly, should appeal to anyone who is considering this game,) all the quirky characters and cool cinemas and events and so-on and so-forth … the game is depressingly short (figure 8-10hrs at most for the core story.) Like most free-roaming explorers, the game depends on your desire to “catch ‘em all!” to keep you playing, either looking at all the cool setting or finding all the collectibles. Admittedly, I’m interested in the fascinating metal-style mythology of this epic world, so I’m hunting for that now.
The game’s brevity would seem to be an unfortunate decision to include RTS multiplayer in the game. This has very little interest to me, and I would’ve much rather seen them incorporate the coding into additional story missions rather than saving it all for multiplayer (with no way to familiarize yourself with the other factions’ units and abilities other than playing against a typical AI which substitutes higher resource and production rates for actual skill.) I would have loved to, instead of playing multiplayer RTS, had to play a mission or three as the goth faction or the demon faction, especially because it would’ve fleshed out these adversaries just a little bit more and made it a little more satisfying to beat them.
Other minor gripes include the often-used mechanic of “water is deadly,” in that if you end up driving your car into the ocean or off a cliff, rather than just have a quick cinematic of your character crawling, annoyed, out of the surf, you go back to the last mission you accomplished after a brief death sequence. Another minor issue is that I found it hard to give intricate commands to my troops (though I suppose that kind of fits given my troops.) Also, re-used voice-clips during the missions and RTS tend to get a little old.
In all, this game is definitely a rental, but metalheads on a mission to relive the days of epic albums should probably pick this up …