Brütal Legend Review [X360, PS3]

Posted November 13, 2009 by JGifford in Featured, Featured Home, PS3, Reviews, Xbox 360.

It may be strange to describe Brütal Legend as an inverted pyramid, but I think it’s accurate — the game is impressive and inspired, but fundamentally flawed. The Egyptians started with the base, an elementary notion that seems to have escaped Tim Schafer and the team at Double Fine. Instead of the core gameplay and mechanics, the focus appears to have been on the secondary details, like humor and the production values. Of course, that means these details are far more refined than almost any game out there. It helps that Tim Schafer proves he is the king of comedy in video games with a ridiculous story and hilarious script that is far beyond anything else that has appeared in the medium.

When Eddie Riggs (the roadie for a band that is completely undeserving of his skills) gets pulled into a world where humans have been enslaved by demons, he must harness the power of heavy metal to help lead them to freedom. He’s able to do so because of a change in the laws of the universe; while a guitar simply makes music in our land, it summons lightning and fire in this one. The world is full of landmarks and environments taken straight off of heavy metal album covers, complete with cliffs made from massive speakers and gigantic stone swords plunged into the ground.

With its intimate understanding of the culture, this game will be funnier to those who have spent more time with rock and metal. As a fan of punk and emo, I even had a few laughs at my own expense. They also managed to bring in the heavy guns for voice talent; Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Halford, Lemmy Kilmister, and Lita Ford lend serious credibility to the jabs at aspects of the music. Jack Black plays his role pitch perfect, never becoming the extreme and overbearing personality he sometimes can. Instead, his reverence for the music and the joy he feels after ending up in this world is infectious.

It is a joy to be in this world — until it comes to the mechanics and actually playing the game. That’s because Brütal Legend tries to bend genres, but never gets any of them right. Time is spent driving around the open world doing various missions as an action-adventure, while the multiplayer and major battles resemble an RTS. Despite having both an axe and a magical guitar , combat is never satisfying because foes can absorb so much damage. Even the nuts and bolts, the minor details that should be easy to get right, have issues; enemy swords will often strike below or next to Eddie, yet he’ll still take damage.

Side-quests are somewhat reminiscent of the first Assassin’s Creed because there are five that need to be done over and over in order to purchase weapon upgrades or moves; at least here they’re optional. But even the main quests have issues. Though they are rather clunky, there’s also a serious problem with the core design. Many of them are cloaked escort missions where you need to accomplish a goal, but also make sure a certain unit doesn’t die along the way. The lack of any visual indication of health for these units means that it is difficult to know when they need to pull back or when they’ve fully healed up. Add the horrendous checkpoint system, and it’s quite possible to lose 10 minutes of progress on a quest.

Stage battles take aspects of the music industry and twist them in interesting ways to create situations with two opposing armies battling over resources and attempting to destroy their enemy’s base. Now if that sounds like an RTS, that’s because it is. You build merchandise booths to control fans, the resource that is used to build and upgrade troops, and direct those troops to different positions on the battlefield. The major difference from a typical RTS is that Eddie is actually running around on the field and you command armies from his point of view instead of being an armchair general viewing the battlefield from a satellite. Because of his relative weakness mentioned earlier, it is disappointing that there is not enough control of — or information about — the units under your command. This forces battles to devolve into building as many allies as possible, throwing them into a meat grinder, then repeating.

It’s a frustrating thing, talking about Brütal Legend. It’s as if all the care and dedication that goes into a great game was there, but they forgot to craft the gameplay. It has all the accoutrement of games that we hail as the best, all the fine details we usually consider hallmarks of a polished game. But that was supposed to come after creating a game that was fun to play. Maybe this flipped pyramid is all the more interesting because it remains standing, despite its questionable foundations.

Tagged as Brutal Legend, Double Fine, EA, Jack Black, Tim Schafer