[Categories: Platform, playstation3, Review, xbox360]
[Tags: Brütal Legend, Review]
Brütal Legend has been a long awaited title for fans of Tim Schafer, and fans of metal, who it may not necessarily appealed to from the media alone, is to a fan of any specific genre of game. I can honestly say that despite my research into the game pre-launch it wasn’t exactly clear to me what type of game this is, and to be honest, now that I’m finished I’m still not entirely sure.
If you’ve played the demo, what you saw was the first 15-20 minutes or so (If you sat through the video), was a unique story introduction, some decent visuals, and some very good comedic writing. You are then dropped into a brawler game with a few simple combos, and some hand holding through the first little bit, and then you are introduced into a little vehicular combat on your way to the first boss, which is more vehicular combat. My expectation coming into this was that it was going to be presented as an open world game, meaning a fairly large game play area, with missions scattered around, mostly doing brawler type missions with a couple other mission types thrown in to mix up the game play, and little collectible knick-knacks scattered around to divert you from the story. This isn’t totally off the mark, but it’s not totally on the mark either.
Scenery in the first half of the game is pretty much awesome, large stone statues fill the environment to create the metal album cover inspired world that the creators indicated all along that they were going for. Unfortunately this same passion didn’t really persist through the course of the game, with an environment lull at the half way mark with an uninspiring jungle motif, followed by a gloom and doom environment that is OK but certainly lacks the epic landmarks from the starting area, and along with them went my ambition to blindly explore them.
Unfortunately the environments weren’t the only element of this game to fall off. The story itself is also victim of this… what starts as a very unique story with genuinely funny writing almost abruptly turns into a bland hero saves the world story, with a couple twists, and none of the humor. Its not that the story is bad per sé it’s simply not as unique or funny as I was lead to believe it would be by the demo, which made it more disappointing to me than it perhaps deserves. Come in without these expectations and I’m sure it will be enjoyable to you. One of the elements of the story that I thought was executed very well was Eddie’s role as a roadie, his mantra, “a good roadie should never be seen”, is definitely carried through the story which makes it somewhat unique, however it ultimately comes back to bite it in the end and actually makes the ending to me a little less satisfying.
It didn’t occur to me until I started writing this review how brilliant the gameplay design was in this game, and how the evolution of gameplay ties into the story. As I mentioned, Brutal Legend starts out as a brawler, which makes a lot of sense as Eddie is introduced into this world alone, he quickly gains a friend in Ophelia and the game introduces the ‘co-op attack’, as you might assume the 2 characters combine to do a more powerful attack, a simple gameplay mechanic which at the time doesn’t seem all that useful, but becomes crucial later on. You are also introduced to “Solo’s” which are essentially quick time events, that if successful act as buffs, attacks, or summons throughout the game.
The story missions progress as brawers, and the side quests are mostly races and ambush missions which are essentially a “beat all the bad guys” missions using the simple brawler mechanics you’ve used in getting to this stage of the game. As the game progresses story-wise Eddie is constantly making friends who have their own abilities and what not, and the story quests evolve into an RTS-like style of gameplay but as Tim Schafer himself will tell you, don’t try to play it like one or you’ll lose.
It is like an RTS in the sense that you have to gather resources (fans), by building constructs (merch booths) in order to create units (afore mentioned friends) to help you win a battle. You do have controls over your units, to either follow, attack, defend, or goto a predetermined location. You are given the ability to fly to sort of facilitate this, but if you simply send your units off on their own they will surely be wiped out. After you’ve assembled your army, the standard course of action is to lead your troops to the enemy, and effectively use double team attacks to take out high priority targets as needed. Certain enemies tend to be weaker to certain attacks and what not, so how you use your double teams and solos will ultimately decide how the battle will end. The solo’s are generally speaking over powered, and most conflicts can be easily resolved by hopping in your thunderhog which has a co-op stun attack, then jumping out, and using your facemelter solo to burn down most of the fodder, grabbing one of your groupies and blasting anything that remains. From that explanation I hope to convey that this gameplay element is NOT RTS in any way shape or form, its the same brawler/coop mechanics you played in the beginning its simple shown in a different light. And that is the genius behind it, the gameplay evolves into something more than just the brawler, and in doing so makes you feel like you’re doing something completely different so it doesn’t fall victim to the same repetitive nature of many open world games. The only problem is that the player isn’t really taught how to win during the process of playing the game, which can lead to some frustrating moments and repeating the same story quests over and over.
Even the side quests have certain elements of the RTS-esque gameplay woven into it, for example, when doing the turret missions there are always troops on the ground that you can control using the same attack, defend, goto commands which are necessary to keep the baddies off your turret. Similarly there are Mortar quests where you drive your deuce around and with a button you tell the cannoneer to fire on your location. Other side quest modes are the standard fare, racing, ambush, and kill X monsters quests. There are tons of knick-knacks around, I think 120 dragons, every 10 will give Eddie a buff of some kind, 15 or so dragon orb things which provides insight into the lore behind the world (and honestly some very well interesting and well presented story pieces that shouldn’t be missed), and tablets that contain new solo’s (you’d do well to find these ASAP, makes for easy wins), all of which provide “Fire Tributes” which you use to upgrade Eddie and the Duece, new buffs to your guitar and Axe for added effects, as well as new primary and secondary weapons and armor to your car, all of which makes your life easier, as well as new paint jobs and heads for your custom mount rockmore.
When it’s all said and done, I had a decent time with this game but I’d have a hard time recommending it to a casual gamer, especially this time of year with so many strong titles out or on the way. I would have a strongly different opinion if the strengths in the beginning of the story telling, humor and environments had of continued throughout the game, instead of dropping off like it did however, so I certainly wouldn’t try to talk anyone out of it. On the other hand, I would definitely suggest anyone like myself with a passion for games to give this a run through. Its really amazing how well the interweaving gameplay styles were executed and evolved along with the store. It most certainly could be used as a reference for how to take some of the tediousness out of repeating mission types in sandbox games this insight may be worth the cost alone.
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