MrDaravon
I could throw people off roofs and watch them hilarious ragdoll off and hit the street all day in AC2.
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I'm not sure that I've ever been so torn on a game before. One one hand, Brutal Legend takes you into an awesome Heavy Metal-inspired world and setting, and gave me a new appreciation for the genre. The dialogue and characters are actually pretty entertaining, which is a pleasant surprise because I generally don't care much for Jack Black. On the other hand, all of the actual gameplay ranges from mediocre to absolutely frustrating dogshit. Doublefine needed to drop one of the subgenres the game has and polish the remaining ones; the beat-em' up/brawler combat is not fantastic, but gets the job done. You get around most of the overworld via car travel, and the car controls are pretty rough; any time you need tight controls you will fail. I remember one specific portion where I was trying to make a ramp jump, and could not get the car to go off the jump in a straight line literally 7 times in a row. And with the speed your car moves, I would not infrequently die due to a sudden pit or cliff edge that had nothing below it that I couldn't see. Also I don't care what Schaefer says, the game needed a damn jump button; I got stuck on geometry on several occasions, and had to re-load to get unstuck, and in most of these situations there was a 2 foot high obstacle blocking me.
The RTS gameplay is what ultimately really kills the game for me though; it's just not well done at all. For what they claim they built the game upon, it feels barely functional. Probably my biggest complaint is that the game doesn't seem to do a good job of telling you what's going on; on multiple occasions, I would have a ton of units one spot with nothing going on, I'd leave for 30 seconds and come back, and they'd all be dead with me having NO clue what happened. I had several of the RTS battles turn into horrible battles of attrition, until later on when you get Rock Block (the riff that allows you to temporarily block enemy unit building). I also found out later online that you can carry the rally flag with you (which I did not realize), so once I had Rock Block I would just immediately start battles with that, and start rushing fan towers while spamming Batlte Cry, and once I realized this the last couple battles felt almost broken easy. But even after that, none of them were actually any fun to play; spending most of my time managing units while frantically doing riffs as they became back available never really felt like it fit into the game properly. I understand the game's conceit with the different type of armies you recruit, but it feels like the game would have benefited more by having the mass battles be much more RTS-lite than they are. Some more along the lines of a Dynasty Warriors or N3 type setup, but maybe just with units you could call into assist.
Ultimately I feel like I enjoyed the game despite itself; I wanted to explore more of the world and get unlockables, but I also had no desire to actually do any of the story missions. Also with how poorly I felt about the RTS sections, mutliplayer isn't something I'd even have the slightest interest in. I don't know how likely it is, but I would like to see a sequel made with some of these issues worked out. I'm glad I rented it, I'd probably recommend either that or getting it cheap ($30 or less), but I'm glad I decided to hold off on it when it first came out.
3 out of 5 stars
The RTS gameplay is what ultimately really kills the game for me though; it's just not well done at all. For what they claim they built the game upon, it feels barely functional. Probably my biggest complaint is that the game doesn't seem to do a good job of telling you what's going on; on multiple occasions, I would have a ton of units one spot with nothing going on, I'd leave for 30 seconds and come back, and they'd all be dead with me having NO clue what happened. I had several of the RTS battles turn into horrible battles of attrition, until later on when you get Rock Block (the riff that allows you to temporarily block enemy unit building). I also found out later online that you can carry the rally flag with you (which I did not realize), so once I had Rock Block I would just immediately start battles with that, and start rushing fan towers while spamming Batlte Cry, and once I realized this the last couple battles felt almost broken easy. But even after that, none of them were actually any fun to play; spending most of my time managing units while frantically doing riffs as they became back available never really felt like it fit into the game properly. I understand the game's conceit with the different type of armies you recruit, but it feels like the game would have benefited more by having the mass battles be much more RTS-lite than they are. Some more along the lines of a Dynasty Warriors or N3 type setup, but maybe just with units you could call into assist.
Ultimately I feel like I enjoyed the game despite itself; I wanted to explore more of the world and get unlockables, but I also had no desire to actually do any of the story missions. Also with how poorly I felt about the RTS sections, mutliplayer isn't something I'd even have the slightest interest in. I don't know how likely it is, but I would like to see a sequel made with some of these issues worked out. I'm glad I rented it, I'd probably recommend either that or getting it cheap ($30 or less), but I'm glad I decided to hold off on it when it first came out.
3 out of 5 stars
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