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    Brütal Legend

    Game » consists of 10 releases. Released Oct 13, 2009

    Brütal Legend is a humorous heavy-metal, open-world, action-adventure game with light real-time strategy elements. As Eddie Riggs, lead the people of the Brütal World to rise up against the Tainted Coil demons who rule the world, and their leader, the sinister Emperor Doviculus.

    systemlink's Brütal Legend (Xbox 360) review

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    Damn you RTS elements!


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    I need to admit, I have a huge man-crush on Tim Schafer. This probably came to a head for me with the release of "Psychonauts," easily the best action-adventure game on the xbox system and generally one of my favourite games of all time. Schafer has an amazing talent for not simply dreaming up and creating these fantastical worlds of psychic summer camp students or skeletal afterlife-travel salesmen, but in infusing these unbelievable worlds with very real characters and emotional interactions. So when I heard that Tim Schafer and the boys at Double Fine were creating "Brutal Legend," a game set in a universe devised principally from heavy metal music covers and song lyrics, I was already throwing up the horns in anticipation.

    Now, after fully exploring every nook and cranny of this savage fable, I can say that this game does indeed bear the classic Schafer hallmarks of an engrossing story and a beautiful, expansive world, but with them come also many aggravating missteps in design. Although Brutal Legend carries with it the vintage Schafer charm, its muddled gameplay, syncopated and hasty conclusion, and deluded insistence that it is foremost a multiplayer game, even to the point of sacrificing the single player component, create too many hurdles for this to be a truly marquis game.

    Brutal Legend tells the story of metal-head Eddie Riggs, voiced by all-around clown Jack Black, a roadie for a pop punk band who reminisces about rock and roll's past, when the music was "real." An accident on stage during a show leads to him bleeding into his belt buckle, which inexplicably causes him to be transported into a world of demons and metal. Within this world an enslaved human population is controlled by a demonic army led by Lord Doviculus (voiced by Tim Curry), an emperor with a bondage mask and a four-necked guitar, and his glam-rock sidekick General Lionwhyte (done by Rob Halford, of "Judas Priest" fame). Using his innate rock and roadie abilities Eddie goes about helping the human resistance, finding allies and killing demons in an attempt to take back the land in the name of metal.

    The story told in Brutal Legend is great, finding an entertaining mix of bust-a-gut comedy and fist-pumping excitement, but where it truly excels is in the characters themselves. Their expressions and motivations seem real and believable, despite the unbelievable setting, which works well to pull you into the plot. Most surprising of all was in the funny yet not over-the-top voice work of Jack Black; who would've thought that a man who in real life isn't a very believable character could pull off such an earnestly funny, yet emotionally striking performance? The only issue I had at all with the narrative is that it ends too soon. It builds up to this seemingly epic climax of a confrontation between man and demon that's never actually realized. The final battle with the demons comes unexpectedly, and I was taken by surprised when I realized that it was in fact the game's finale.

    Brutal Legend's world is a stunning one, its rolling landscapes adorned with all manner of skulls, swords, or various other classically bad-ass symbols protruding from every angle. The walls are made of guitar amplifiers, bushes of chrome, and the sacred trees grow bottles of beer. In a few words, it's f*cking metal. There are constantly new and crazy landmarks to search out and gawk at, and the bright, clean graphics enhance the already outstanding artistic style. As previously mentioned the character models are Brutal Legend's greatest feature, particularly in the range of their facial expressions; Tim Schafer really understands that the core of "funny" comes from a character's physical action and reaction, which explains why his games can always pull off the nigh-insurmountable task of being hilarious.

    The gameplay in Brutal Legend, however, is where its gears start to grind. It starts off much as you'd expect a game of this fashion to commence, with a character, a car, an axe, and a whole lot of places to explore and demons to decapitate. The combat is simplistic, and all the better for it. The A button swings your axe, tapping X shoots lightning, and holding X hits an opponent with fire. While there are a few more advanced combos, that's all you really need to know. There's also a musical system in place, cribbed almost directly from "Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time." You can select various solos and play them by hitting timed button sequences for various effects, such as "The Deuce Summon," which conjures up your car, or "The Facemelter," a solo which, appropriately, melts your enemies faces. The initial hours of exploration and combat contain some of the highlights of the entire game. As you continue through, however, the action slowly but surely starts taking a sideline to commanding your growing array of troops, in faux-real-time-strategy fashion.

    Though I've heard many grumblings and complaints about the new strategy element, it wasn't the RTS gameplay itself that put me off; the large-scale troop battles where a fun mixture of combat and planning, and while it could at times be frustrating it was never truly difficult. No, what really got to me was how the single player game itself started taking a backseat to showing you all the RTS functions. In essence, the main quest turned into little more than a multiplayer tutorial. Gone were the initial missions of decapitating giant worms and fighting metal spider queens, to be replaced with "quests" that boiled down to teaching you what each of your units can do for you when you get to the next big RTS battle.

    There are numerous side misions in the world of Brutal Legend in addition to the main "quest," and while some of them are uniquely fun to play, much of it boils down to either "fighting things" or "racing things." The voice work is recycled for these as well, so you'll be hearing the same lines over and over. If I have to hear Jack Black exclaim "Hey guys, who we ambushin'?" once more in my lifetime I may have an aneurysm. You don't unlock much for accomplishing these missions, only money in the form of "fire tributes," which is a useful but nonessential commodity, as most of the items or upgrades you can buy only make a marginal difference.

    For those that want to forgo quests entirely and just explore the world, Brutal Legend has you covered in spades, with masses of hidden Bound Serpents, Legends, Fireplug Jumps, Landmark Viewers, and Buried Songs to find to keep your exploration complex busy. Though I usually hate games that force me into spending hours searching every last corner for items, I was grateful for this in Brutal Legend, since it gave me a chance to drive around and enjoy the world's landscape at my own pace, as opposed to the main missions which push you through its locations at too hectic a speed.

    From start to finish Brutal Legend will run its course in about six to eight hours, with a few extra thrown in if you're a diehard completionist or achievement/trophy whore. It's a short game, perhaps too short, especially considering its unexpected ending. There is a great deal to like about Brutal Legend, with its loving homage/roast to the genre of metal music, its surprisingly real characters that you grow to care about, and a story that can make you laugh, cry, and jump up and down in your chair in equal measure. But at some point in the game it feels like Tim Schafer forgot that his true strength lies in crafting scenes and characters, and instead put too much emphasis on his "Not an RTS" RTS multiplayer component. Although I disagree with those saying that the RTS elements aren't fun, they aren't as much fun as the other single player gameplay elements, and I do believe that too much was sacrificed in order to make it such an integral part of the game. Brutal Legend is a good game that many will enjoy, but if it had stuck to the more classic action-adventure archetype than it could have truly been something special. 
     
    By Chris Norris-Jones - Systemlink Blog

    Other reviews for Brütal Legend (Xbox 360)

      Command the power of rock! 0

       Staring at a heavy metal album cover can muster up many thoughts: why is there a Black Panther shooting laser beams from its eyes? Why do I find that so cool? And what in God’s name does this have to do with the actual music? The answer to the latter is normally ‘nothing’, but the crazy, elaborate heavy metal album covers of old never failed to capture the imagination. They definitely inspired Tim Schafer in his teenage years, and now his team at Double Fine have finally brought it all to life ...

      13 out of 17 found this review helpful.

      I throw up the horns and salute. 0

      Brütal Legend is a great game, and I enjoyed it from start to finish. It's not perfect, but it has the quality you expect from a Double Fine game where it counts. Even if you're not a fan of heavy metal, there's lots to enjoy here.  Story: Everybody knows the basic plotline by now. Eddie Riggs is the greatest roadie in the world, but he's stuck working for the worst "metal" band in the world, Kabbage Boy, who completely dismiss the great...

      3 out of 3 found this review helpful.

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