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Like a great metal band, Brütal Legend is greater than the sum of its parts.
October 19, 2009 | 8:43 PM PSTKombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game's About
Heavy metal and gaming have a lot in common. Both evolved from an underground subculture into cultural touchstones and have persisted far longer than any of the initial critics thought possible. Both have been despised as evil, mind-numbing, soul-poisoning filth by parents groups and the government. Both have vocal 'hardcore' fanbases with clear ideas of what the product should be and a passionate hatred for anything they feel dilutes it. Gaming legend Tim Schafer definitely falls into that category, at least as far as metal is concerned. Brütal Legend is a love letter to the glory days of music's greatest genre and a scathing attack against the likes of Hair Metal, Nu Metal and all the other embarrassments that taint its mighty name. Tim Schafer's distinctively weird sense of humor permeates the entire experience, as does his talent for crafting wondrous gameworlds and filling them with lovably ridiculous characters. There's also some damn good genre-twisting gameplay buried beneath all of the hilarity and metal iconography, but a host of annoying idiosyncrasies limit the game's appeal beyond the circles of dedicated metal-heads or their hardcore gamer brethren.
What's Hot
The world of Brütal Legend is a mosaic of heavy metal fantasy, littered with swords and sorcery, demons, leather, blood, fire, skulls, boobs and all the other great stuff that terrifies Tipper Gore. All these trademark elements of the heavy metal mythos are exaggerated to a hilarious degree, making the game as much a loving tribute as it is a witty satire of a culture that is often guilty of taking itself way too seriously. Exploring this exotic realm feels like diving into a classic heavy metal album cover, a genuinely unique fantasy world that's incredibly entertaining to uncover and behold. You'll see walls of screaming amps guarding the ocean with their sonic barrage, giant hot-rod engines hanging above evil druidic rituals, and armies of Barbarians, Goths, and BDSM-clad demons fighting it out before a backdrop of skull and guitar-shaped mountains. Under any other context, the absurdity of this mish-mash of iconography would render it incomprehensible, but when viewed through a heavy metal lens, it all makes perfect, hilarious sense. Metal virgins will likely react to their first steps into this realm the same way many of us reacted the first time we encountered The Lord of the Rings universe: alien, overwhelming, yet fully realized, completely cohesive and utterly mesmerizing.
The storyline that Schafer and company have crafted to lead you through this heavy metal playground is the game's greatest strength. As of this writing, Brütal Legend is sitting close to the top of my 'favorite videogame storylines of all time' list. Obviously it's funny, but there's also a lot of real substance here, with narrative threads that explore love, death, camaraderie, destiny, and sacrifice. It's a remarkably human journey through a completely inhuman world. Like Psychonauts, Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle and the others, Brütal Legend demonstrates Tim Schafer's amazing ability to write shockingly relatable characters out of absolutely absurd circumstances. Many of the characters in Brütal Legend are exaggerated heavy metal stereotypes, others are just completely random concoctions born out of some bored artist's brain, but Schafer adds additional layers to otherwise cheap gags, drawing humorous and dramatic nuances out of what by all accounts should be simple, one-note characters. The dialogue between these characters, both the one-liners during gameplay and the extended banter during cut-scenes, is generally witty, and frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious.
Jack Black carries a great deal of the narrative load on his broad, leather-clad shoulders, and he delivers an outstanding performance. This coming from someone that off the top of his head, can't name a single Jack Black movie that he's ever enjoyed. The best praise I can give is the fact that I forgot Black was even voicing the role after an hour or so, he simply became Eddie Riggs to me. The rest of the voice actors also perform admirably. Unlike Black, the metal icons like Ozzy Osbourne and Lemmy Kilmister are basically just playing themselves, but that's honestly part of the appeal of their characters; they're talking totems in a metal world. The exception is Rob Halford, lead singer of Judas Priest, who turns two performances for two totally different personalities, the standout of which is General LionWhyte, a delightfully evil hair-metal caricature. If the man ever needs to supplement his singing income, videogame voice-overs wouldn't be a bad choice. Topping off the audio presentation is one of the single most bad-ass soundtracks of any game, ever. Ok granted, I'm a metal fan, but this is purely the good stuff, so in the same way any fan of music can appreciate Mozart, fans of hip-hop, top-40 pop or techno should still be able to listen to this stuff, appreciate the musicality and appreciate how perfectly it complements the rest of the game.
The abundance of creativity doesn't apply exclusively to the presentation either, as Double Fine has fused a motley crew of gameplay elements into the craziest genre mash-up ever devised. At first the gameplay seems to be standard action-adventure fare, but it's not long before open-world exploration, vehicular mayhem, rhythm-action, and real-time strategy are added to the fray. All of the different gameplay styles are streamlined and well integrated, so the experience never feels fractured. The open-world allows you to progress the storyline at your pace or ignore it completely in favor of optional side-quests or simply driving around to take in the sights. Once you jump into a story mission you'll fine third-person hacking and slashing is supplemented by the RTS mechanics, not replaced by them. At any point during the large RTS-style 'Stage Battles' you're free to jump into the fray and get your axe bloody. Direct involvement and full exploitation of the powerful, unit-specific double-team maneuvers is damn-near required to complete the later skirmishes. You'll also need to make use of the guitar solos, each of which calls up a quick rhythm action game (think Ocarina of Time instead of Guitar Hero) to call down a flaming zeppelin…or just help you find your car. Individually, none of these gameplay elements are spectacular, but put them all together and you have an extremely unique and entertaining little package.
What's Not
It's understandable that none of the gameplay styles in Brütal Legend are as fleshed out as you would find in games with a singular focus, since they all have to fit on an Xbox 360 controller and piece together into a cogent experience. The streamlining process has resulted in a few irritating problems though, particularly in the grand RTS-style stage battles. Eddie gains the ability to fly but doing so only reveals a chunk of the battle-field and there's no traditional aerial view or mini-map, so it can be frustrating trying to keep track of your troops. When you do find them you can only command them using simple commands on the d-pad. It works well enough most of the time, since you'll usually be on the front line with them, but there will be instances where you'll be dying for an effective way to set up and manage multiple fronts. Not that it's all gravy using Eddie. The targeting system works great for the close-range stuff, but try and target a moving enemy at range and the game might decide that the peon enemy in front of you is far more of a threat than the ranged badass eviscerating your health. Console RTS games aren't exactly effortless affairs at the best of times, Brütal Legend suffers for its attempts to oversimplify the mechanics of an inherently complex genre.
The RTS component, while flawed, still works well as one piece of a bigger puzzle, but it doesn't hold up on its own as a multiplayer component. To Double Fine's credit, all three of the playable armies are well balanced and have a lot of unit variety, but they don't differ enough in their play-styles to offer significant depth. You'll use the same basic strategy no matter which army you choose, so the choice basically just comes down to what visual style you're in the mood for - classic metal, emo goth-rock or demonic BDSM. Even more painful, the game only includes one multiplayer game mode, skirmish, where you attempt to take out the opposition's bases before they destroy yours. Even the inclusion of now-standard RTS modes like capture-and-hold would have done a great deal to make the multiplayer more appealing. There's not enough depth or variety here to stand a chance of taking your time away from this season's multiplayer heavy hitters, or even fully-featured RTS games like Halo Wars or Tom Clancy's EndWar.
Brütal Legend suffers from the same affliction as almost every open-world action game not named Grand Theft Auto: repetitive side-missions. The missions here aren't anything we haven't seen before, and include escort missions that force you to protect a tour bus from attacks by chopper-riding demons by following behind in your hot-rod, dungeon-crawling excursions where you mulch your way through platoons of enemies, point-to-point races, and the obligatory random widgets to collect. Considering the variety of gameplay styles that Double Fine opted to include in the game and the sheer outlandishness of the world they've created, it's more than a little disappointing that they didn't come up with something a little more interesting to do between storyline missions. I mean hell, give Eddie a camera and send us on a scavenger hunt for album-cover references! Anything! You'll probably play the side-missions anyway though, because beating them earns you points towards Ozzy Osborne's shop, where you're able to upgrade your weapons and hot-rod, but doing so will quickly become a chore.
Final Word
Like a great metal band, Brütal Legend is greater than the sum of its parts. The drum-beat of the gameplay may be a little erratic at times, if only because the drummer's creativity and ambition overwhelmed his finesse, but it delivers the hard-driving goods when they're needed most. The rest of the group picks up the slack though, with outstanding presentation values, a brilliant storyline and an amazingly realized metal wonderland to explore. Metal non-fans may not understand the true appeal of Tim Schafer's latest creation, but by this point metal fans are used to being misunderstood and underestimated anyway. It's not one of the best games of the year, but it is one of my favorites.
What the Game's About
Heavy metal and gaming have a lot in common. Both evolved from an underground subculture into cultural touchstones and have persisted far longer than any of the initial critics thought possible. Both have been despised as evil, mind-numbing, soul-poisoning filth by parents groups and the government. Both have vocal 'hardcore' fanbases with clear ideas of what the product should be and a passionate hatred for anything they feel dilutes it. Gaming legend Tim Schafer definitely falls into that category, at least as far as metal is concerned. Brütal Legend is a love letter to the glory days of music's greatest genre and a scathing attack against the likes of Hair Metal, Nu Metal and all the other embarrassments that taint its mighty name. Tim Schafer's distinctively weird sense of humor permeates the entire experience, as does his talent for crafting wondrous gameworlds and filling them with lovably ridiculous characters. There's also some damn good genre-twisting gameplay buried beneath all of the hilarity and metal iconography, but a host of annoying idiosyncrasies limit the game's appeal beyond the circles of dedicated metal-heads or their hardcore gamer brethren.
What's Hot
The world of Brütal Legend is a mosaic of heavy metal fantasy, littered with swords and sorcery, demons, leather, blood, fire, skulls, boobs and all the other great stuff that terrifies Tipper Gore. All these trademark elements of the heavy metal mythos are exaggerated to a hilarious degree, making the game as much a loving tribute as it is a witty satire of a culture that is often guilty of taking itself way too seriously. Exploring this exotic realm feels like diving into a classic heavy metal album cover, a genuinely unique fantasy world that's incredibly entertaining to uncover and behold. You'll see walls of screaming amps guarding the ocean with their sonic barrage, giant hot-rod engines hanging above evil druidic rituals, and armies of Barbarians, Goths, and BDSM-clad demons fighting it out before a backdrop of skull and guitar-shaped mountains. Under any other context, the absurdity of this mish-mash of iconography would render it incomprehensible, but when viewed through a heavy metal lens, it all makes perfect, hilarious sense. Metal virgins will likely react to their first steps into this realm the same way many of us reacted the first time we encountered The Lord of the Rings universe: alien, overwhelming, yet fully realized, completely cohesive and utterly mesmerizing.
The storyline that Schafer and company have crafted to lead you through this heavy metal playground is the game's greatest strength. As of this writing, Brütal Legend is sitting close to the top of my 'favorite videogame storylines of all time' list. Obviously it's funny, but there's also a lot of real substance here, with narrative threads that explore love, death, camaraderie, destiny, and sacrifice. It's a remarkably human journey through a completely inhuman world. Like Psychonauts, Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle and the others, Brütal Legend demonstrates Tim Schafer's amazing ability to write shockingly relatable characters out of absolutely absurd circumstances. Many of the characters in Brütal Legend are exaggerated heavy metal stereotypes, others are just completely random concoctions born out of some bored artist's brain, but Schafer adds additional layers to otherwise cheap gags, drawing humorous and dramatic nuances out of what by all accounts should be simple, one-note characters. The dialogue between these characters, both the one-liners during gameplay and the extended banter during cut-scenes, is generally witty, and frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious.
Jack Black carries a great deal of the narrative load on his broad, leather-clad shoulders, and he delivers an outstanding performance. This coming from someone that off the top of his head, can't name a single Jack Black movie that he's ever enjoyed. The best praise I can give is the fact that I forgot Black was even voicing the role after an hour or so, he simply became Eddie Riggs to me. The rest of the voice actors also perform admirably. Unlike Black, the metal icons like Ozzy Osbourne and Lemmy Kilmister are basically just playing themselves, but that's honestly part of the appeal of their characters; they're talking totems in a metal world. The exception is Rob Halford, lead singer of Judas Priest, who turns two performances for two totally different personalities, the standout of which is General LionWhyte, a delightfully evil hair-metal caricature. If the man ever needs to supplement his singing income, videogame voice-overs wouldn't be a bad choice. Topping off the audio presentation is one of the single most bad-ass soundtracks of any game, ever. Ok granted, I'm a metal fan, but this is purely the good stuff, so in the same way any fan of music can appreciate Mozart, fans of hip-hop, top-40 pop or techno should still be able to listen to this stuff, appreciate the musicality and appreciate how perfectly it complements the rest of the game.
The abundance of creativity doesn't apply exclusively to the presentation either, as Double Fine has fused a motley crew of gameplay elements into the craziest genre mash-up ever devised. At first the gameplay seems to be standard action-adventure fare, but it's not long before open-world exploration, vehicular mayhem, rhythm-action, and real-time strategy are added to the fray. All of the different gameplay styles are streamlined and well integrated, so the experience never feels fractured. The open-world allows you to progress the storyline at your pace or ignore it completely in favor of optional side-quests or simply driving around to take in the sights. Once you jump into a story mission you'll fine third-person hacking and slashing is supplemented by the RTS mechanics, not replaced by them. At any point during the large RTS-style 'Stage Battles' you're free to jump into the fray and get your axe bloody. Direct involvement and full exploitation of the powerful, unit-specific double-team maneuvers is damn-near required to complete the later skirmishes. You'll also need to make use of the guitar solos, each of which calls up a quick rhythm action game (think Ocarina of Time instead of Guitar Hero) to call down a flaming zeppelin…or just help you find your car. Individually, none of these gameplay elements are spectacular, but put them all together and you have an extremely unique and entertaining little package.
What's Not
It's understandable that none of the gameplay styles in Brütal Legend are as fleshed out as you would find in games with a singular focus, since they all have to fit on an Xbox 360 controller and piece together into a cogent experience. The streamlining process has resulted in a few irritating problems though, particularly in the grand RTS-style stage battles. Eddie gains the ability to fly but doing so only reveals a chunk of the battle-field and there's no traditional aerial view or mini-map, so it can be frustrating trying to keep track of your troops. When you do find them you can only command them using simple commands on the d-pad. It works well enough most of the time, since you'll usually be on the front line with them, but there will be instances where you'll be dying for an effective way to set up and manage multiple fronts. Not that it's all gravy using Eddie. The targeting system works great for the close-range stuff, but try and target a moving enemy at range and the game might decide that the peon enemy in front of you is far more of a threat than the ranged badass eviscerating your health. Console RTS games aren't exactly effortless affairs at the best of times, Brütal Legend suffers for its attempts to oversimplify the mechanics of an inherently complex genre.
The RTS component, while flawed, still works well as one piece of a bigger puzzle, but it doesn't hold up on its own as a multiplayer component. To Double Fine's credit, all three of the playable armies are well balanced and have a lot of unit variety, but they don't differ enough in their play-styles to offer significant depth. You'll use the same basic strategy no matter which army you choose, so the choice basically just comes down to what visual style you're in the mood for - classic metal, emo goth-rock or demonic BDSM. Even more painful, the game only includes one multiplayer game mode, skirmish, where you attempt to take out the opposition's bases before they destroy yours. Even the inclusion of now-standard RTS modes like capture-and-hold would have done a great deal to make the multiplayer more appealing. There's not enough depth or variety here to stand a chance of taking your time away from this season's multiplayer heavy hitters, or even fully-featured RTS games like Halo Wars or Tom Clancy's EndWar.
Brütal Legend suffers from the same affliction as almost every open-world action game not named Grand Theft Auto: repetitive side-missions. The missions here aren't anything we haven't seen before, and include escort missions that force you to protect a tour bus from attacks by chopper-riding demons by following behind in your hot-rod, dungeon-crawling excursions where you mulch your way through platoons of enemies, point-to-point races, and the obligatory random widgets to collect. Considering the variety of gameplay styles that Double Fine opted to include in the game and the sheer outlandishness of the world they've created, it's more than a little disappointing that they didn't come up with something a little more interesting to do between storyline missions. I mean hell, give Eddie a camera and send us on a scavenger hunt for album-cover references! Anything! You'll probably play the side-missions anyway though, because beating them earns you points towards Ozzy Osborne's shop, where you're able to upgrade your weapons and hot-rod, but doing so will quickly become a chore.
Final Word
Like a great metal band, Brütal Legend is greater than the sum of its parts. The drum-beat of the gameplay may be a little erratic at times, if only because the drummer's creativity and ambition overwhelmed his finesse, but it delivers the hard-driving goods when they're needed most. The rest of the group picks up the slack though, with outstanding presentation values, a brilliant storyline and an amazingly realized metal wonderland to explore. Metal non-fans may not understand the true appeal of Tim Schafer's latest creation, but by this point metal fans are used to being misunderstood and underestimated anyway. It's not one of the best games of the year, but it is one of my favorites.
February 8, 2010
