Brütal Legend
Let’s just get this out of the way right now: Brütal Legend’s demo is not an accurate representation of the game. Brütal Legend is a hybrid real-time-strategy-hack-and-slash-adventure game for 360 and PS3. Developed by Double Fine Productions, published by EA, and starring the voice talent of Jack Black, Brütal Legend features a stranger-in-a-strange-land story built into an over-the-top Heavy Metal motif.
Brütal Legend’s biggest problem is its demo, which sold a number of people, including myself, on the game. The demo is the first fifteen or so minutes of the game, a pretty straightforward (and very enjoyable) hack-and-slash affair. It contains nothing of the RTS elements that show up shortly after the levels in the demo end. If you can get past that bit of (unintentional?) misdirection, though, Brütal Legend presents an entertaining story, a brilliantly realized world and a pretty fun game, to boot.
Tim Schafer, Double Fine’s founder, is well known for his quirky games, many of which are classics (Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango). I don’t know that he’s created another classic in Brütal Legend, but the game’s story is full of the humor and depth you’d expect from a Tim Schafer game. An accident during a concert sends Eddie Riggs, “the greatest roadie on the planet,” through time to a world shaped by the forces of heavy metal and ruled by the evil S&M demon-thing Doviculous. Eddie rallies the people of the land behind the brother-sister duo of Lars and Lita, and sets out to free them all from Doviculous’s oppression.
It’s not exactly an earth-shattering plot, but the heavy-metal twist to the world makes it feel fresh. It wasn’t until well after I’d finished the game that I started to think, “Hey, I’ve seen that plot twist before.” This immersion was aided by the voice acting in the game. Jack Black is an obvious, and perfect, Eddie. He clearly committed to the game, playing a lead role in the video leading up to the reveal of the main menu. (I know “the reveal of the main menu” sounds strange, but trust me, it’s awesome.) Rounding out the cast are heavy metal legends Lemmy, Rob Halford and Ozzy Osbourne, with Tim Curry playing the part of Doviculous.
The world is also, in large part, extremely well executed. The starting area is huge, with plenty of places to explore. There are monolithic icons of heavy metal (iron crosses, swords, etc.) strewn across the countryside, and the creatures all seem to be pulled straight from a teenage headbangers school notebook. I don’t want to give anything away, but the areas do feel less and less open as you progress through the game. The metal-inspired nature of the world continues unabated, but each area feels less epic than the one before. I’m largely okay with that, though, because it helps to avoid the Final-Fantasyesque problem of “I know the world’s about to come to an end if I don’t stop it, but I have a few days worth of traveling and side quests to do first.”
All that said, we’re still talking about a game here and the gameplay is really Brütal Legend’s weakest point. It’s not terrible, mind you, but Double Fine fell quite a bit short of redefining console-based real-time strategy. I will give them credit for their decision to gradually introduce the different aspects of the gameplay. There’s a lot to take in if you’ve never played an RTS before, or even if you’ve never been particularly good at them (like me).
Brütal Legend builds each new element on the last. First, you’re fighting on your own. Then, you’re fighting with a partner who you can perform combo attacks with, but can’t order around. Then, you get a group of headbangers all your own to direct as you please. It builds from there until you’re directing armies and building merch booths (resource points) and assaulting enemy stages.
The problem is, by the end of the game, I never really felt like I had a complete grasp on what was going on. The gameplay is introduced gradually, but it’s never explained very well, and the hectic battles don’t provide a lot of insight. During one fight, I found myself getting killed almost as soon as I’d join a fight. When I backed off to try and just manage the battle, my troops were stomped. I lost the battle, and the next time nothing like that happened. I think I was being hit by a combo attack (the enemy commanders can do them, too), but I still don’t know for sure.
The lack of explicit instructions in Brütal Legend is pretty pervasive. Whether it’s quest objectives or just driving around, there were a number of times where I was needlessly confused by what I was doing or where I was going. A number of games, for instance, have tried the “just follow your car’s turn signals” method of getting around. I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it in Brütal Legend. I found myself opening up the world map a lot, and that wouldn’t have been necessary if I’d had a minimap.
My other big complaint is with the solos. It’s a clever idea to whip out your guitar and perform a riff of such devastating badassedness that it reverberates into the world around you, like the solo which raises up ancient relics of metalocity. However, it’s not so clever when you have to play these solos over and over again, like the solo that summons your vehicle, the Deuce. Also, while I understand making the player work for something like building merch booths or the big-damage Facemelter, I don’t think it’s such a good idea to have to play a solo in order to set a simple rally flag. It’s just a time waster. The solos are a clever idea taken way too far.
Really, that may be applicable to the entire game. I grok the reasoning behind the decision to go with an RTS. Eddie Riggs is a roadie, working behind the scenes to get the job done. The problem, though, is that all of your command ability and a good chunk of your combat ability is tied to Eddie. He’s equal parts powerful combatant and mouse cursor. You want Eddie up front beating down enemies, but if you need to change tactics, or control two separate groups of troops or modify your rallying point, you have to pull Eddie out of combat to accomplish those things. Perhaps the intention was to force the player to make tough decisions, but it feels more like poor execution.
In the end, though, my wife really enjoyed Brütal Legend’s story, and I had a lot of fun playing it as well. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I credit originality over perfection, and Brütal Legend certainly has plenty of that. The world and character designs are like nothing you’ve seen before, with fantastic graphics to bring them to life. While the general plot is a bit of retread, the devil’s in the details, and Brütal Legend’s details are highly entertaining, and often hilarious. And even though the gameplay falls short of perfect, I think it’s still more fun than if it had been just-another-hack-and-slash. I can’t recommend it unequivocally, but I’m more than satisfied with my purchase.