I've been thinking about playing Brutal Legend, but I really dislike Jack Black. Can't stand his sense of humor. 
 

You'll notice, but it's not incredibly offensive as Jack Black performances go.
 
The game isn't great, though.

Jack Black's performance is way better than the game itself.

Hulk Hogan is in Saints Row 3?
 
EDIT

Holy fuck, he's Angel?
 
Holy fuck #2 Sasha Grey is Viola?
 
My mind=blown.

He's actually probably the best part of the game. That said I did have fun driving around the overworld.

You just notice the voice but in the game is nice and the humour spot on ... a better question is do you like metal? If so you will enjoy this game a lot ( I did)

@EuanDewar said:

He's actually probably the best part of the game. That said I did have fun driving around the overworld.

This. If you really dislike Jack Black in general, you will not like this game.

I don't think disliking jack black will go well with that game.

Thanks for reminding me of this though

Well, the best part of the game is pretty much Jack Black, and it is kinda the main selling point of the game.

Also the gameplay isn't that great...

The main character's personality is basically the same as Jack Black.

Aye, the game was obviously written around Jack Black's personality. In addition to that, it wasn't that good as far as mechanics go...

The game is terrible. Not liking Jack Black isn't going to be what makes you not like the game.

Why do some people not like Jack Black? He is the best part of the game (the actual gameplay part of Brutal Legend is just ok).

If you don't like this you probably won't like the game.

It depends on why you hate him. If you don't like the sound of his voice, then you will hate this game. If it's just that you don't like his over the top style, then I wouldn't worry as much. His ridiculousness fits in much in the insane world of Brutal Legend than it does in just about any of his movies.

I felt that Jack Black did more acting than he usually does.  Still, if you hate him, you'll have issues.  But if you love metal, give it a shot..  That game is an amazing tribute to the genre.

Brutal Legend is the sort of game that I hate to love. And I generally really enjoy Jack Black. It was a fine game in concept, but boy is that an example of a poor execution. Poor Double Fine. :(

Wow, I don't understand this forum at all. There are no replies for months, then when someone makes a new topic suddenly the place explodes with everyone trying to one-up each other on how much they hate the game.

To OP - ignore these people. I have no idea why this game gets them so riled up but it genuinely is not a bad game at all. As a purely single-player game, it's quite good. As a whole package - single player and multiplayer - it's fantastic. However, if you're the kind of person who only likes 'peaceful' games, i.e. ones where you don't have to think about much and can just casually march through the game without much thought, this game might be a bit too... intense for you. As far as the Jack Black thing goes, though... He's a voice actor. He reads the lines he's told to read. The game isn't a 'Jack Black game' any more than Psychonauts is a 'Richard Horvitz game'.

To everyone else - would you mind explaining why you find the game so awful? Because believe it or not, the problem is likely to be you. Either this simply isn't the kind of game you enjoy (see the stuff I wrote above about peaceful VS intense games) or you didn't work out how to play it as intended (not your fault, the tutorials did admittedly suck). But the actual game is excellent.

@MODernChris: The combat and 'RTS aspects' might not be fun if you take them in isolation of one another. But that's not how the game was supposed to be played. You can't just go on the PC and play a more intensive and deeper version of this game, simply because there IS no such game.

If you can name me a game which has the overall structure of an RTS, but in which you and your opponent both play as the leader of your army, able to fly around the map or land and fight stuff yourself, but also able to be killed if you're not paying attention; in which you can pick off lone enemies or harrass your opponent directly; in which you can take direct control of any of your units and manually fire either a more powerful version of their attack or something completely different, but either way, something more powerful than either of you could do alone; in which you can use a variety of spells which have an enormous range of effects, having to decide when is the best time to use them (as many of them have a cooldown time); in which a large part of the skill comes from constantly having to decide where to be, what to do, where to focus your attention (as unlike a traditional RTS you're not supposed or expected to do everything at once, you have to choose - which actually takes far more strategy than being beaten by someone simply because they are faster at clicking than you); and which has beautiful art direction, well-defined characters rather than just faceless 'units', and countless hilarious lines that those characters say...

If you can name me a PC RTS which has all of those things, plus is actually still played, then you'll have a point. Otherwise I'm going to have to assume that you simply didn't understand how to play the game, rushed through the campaign while trying to win with traditional RTS tactics alone, completely ignored the multiplayer which was the focus of the game to begin with, and then came to erroneously believe that the game is shallow and short.

I'm not a big fan of him but his work is Brutal Legend is really good, I really cannot imagine anybody else voicing Eddie Riggs.

So I recently beat that game, it was the first game I beat this year. I really enjoyed both the performence by Jack Black and the game itself.

4 Stars!

@EuanDewar said:

He's actually probably the best part of the game. That said I did have fun driving around the overworld.

I loved that game until the landscape change from desert/snow to deep, dark forest. It became too claustrophobic and hard to see.

@1ntrinsicator: that's not a great argument, with the same logic you could argue that Blackwater was a great game because what other game puts you in the shoes of an actual Blackwater recruit in wartorn africa AND puts an arcade light gun spin on it whilst ALSO utilising kinect to really put you in the game.

or another way: I cooked this meal using Urine, Shite, dog hair, month old smegma, menstrual blood, splinters, McDonald's coffee and Marmite. sure the ingredients are awful but there's alot of them all in one! that makes it great!

I was really enjoying the game but stopped playing for some reason...

Anyway, I am not a Jack Black fan, but it didn't really detract from the game.

I used to like Jack Black, but with all the shitty movies he's been in recently he kind of sickens me now. I know fans have an impulse to cry "Sell-Out!" when they see bands they like go more commercial, but JB really took it to the limits. And he's always the same guy in all his movies!

As far as his performance in Brutal Legend goes it isnt bad, unless you REALLY hate Jack Black you should be able to enjoy it. As for the game I didnt find any of the mechanics fleshed out enough to really care one way or the other. It has a decent overworld and soundtrack though, If you like Metal, if you dont then stay away from this game ;p

@DarthOrange: Awesome. Jack Black is pure awesome. If you don't enjoy him and mediocre gameplay, skip Brutal legend.

Brutal Legend is my favourite Double Fine game. Fuck the haters.

He makes the game not absolutely terrible. Still, if you never played the game, you aren't missing much.

@Freshbandito: How about you explain exactly why you believe that the 'ingredients' of Brutal Legend are piss, shit and Marmite? Instead of throwing around ridiculous analogies to avoid having to explain your position?

I'm serious. Name some mechanics of the game which you think are objectively bad, and I'll explain why you're wrong.

Only play Brutal Legend if you like the idea of playing a hybrid action/rts game, otherwise you'll have to join the bitchfest with everyone else who felt ripped off. I FUCKING LOVED Brutal Legend. Jack Black is pretty good as Eddie- it won't be an issue.

Jack Black sucks, he can only be Jack Black. He is like Adam Sandler and countless others who can only play themselves. And this game sucked. Tim Schaefer is ok, he is not that amazing or funny.

You'll have other issues to deal with, so I wouldn't worry too much about Jack Black.

It's a decent game with an awesome soundtrack. Story is pretty funny. But mainly, the game is soaked in references that is pretty fun to notice if you're into metal and such. I really enjoyed it, takes a little while to figure out the RTS thing, but it's pretty inoffensive once you get the hang of it.

As for Jack Black, I think it'll be fine.

@1ntrinsicator: You just described another game, Sacrifice, and it's completely awesome. I'm not totally sure about how much it's played today though. It's on Good Old Games if anyone's curious. The game is more than worth a look.

So, Brutal Legend isn't even completely unique on that front and there's no way it tops Sacrifice in terms of gameplay. It sort of just got off on copying the gameplay of an obscure gem.

Only play Brutal Legend if you like the idea of playing a hybrid action/rts game, otherwise you'll have to join the bitchfest with everyone else who felt ripped off. I FUCKING LOVED Brutal Legend. Jack Black is pretty good as Eddie- it won't be an issue.

@BlaineBlaine:

The bigger issue would be if you hate metal. Jack Black is fine in the game and I'm not a big fan of his. BUT, if you don't have a soft spot for metal then you might not like the game.

Holy fuck #2 Sasha Grey is Viola?

I don't know how some people can outright dislike him when, from what I've seen, most of his performances are enjoyable and his voice work in both Kung Fu Panda and Brutal Legend were great.

You'll definitely know it's him but it is one of his more restrained performances. I find he's better when he's given a script to follow.

@JasonR86 said:

@BlaineBlaine:

The bigger issue would be if you hate metal. Jack Black is fine in the game and I'm not a big fan of his. BUT, if you don't have a soft spot for metal then you might not like the game.

This. Also, how do you feel about RTS games? Jack Black talks a little, but the game is about metal, and that's the bigger part of the game. You hear the music more than you hear Jack Black. So how you feel about metal is way more important. Either you think this has one of the greatest licensed soundtracks ever, or you will not have a good time.

If I can love this game and dislike most metal, you can definitely get past the Jack Black-ness unless you truly despise him.

I really liked this game! I also thought that he was pretty good in it

@sirean_syan: ...except they didn't 'copy' Sacrifice at all. The game was inspire by Herzog Zwei - Schafer apparently didn't even know Sacrifice existed until partway through development. Although one of the people who worked on Sacrifice did actually end up working on Brutal Legend too.

But they're still not identical at all. Sure, they both have nodes to be captured, crazy spells, and somewhat similar art direction. But Brutal Legend has a far deeper avatar combat system. Its avatars can fly, allowing them to get around the map with ease, unlike in Sacrifice. And all its units have a unique team-up attack in which you can personally take command of that unit, which you can't do in Sacrifice.

Not that I'm trying to say that Brutal Legend is deeper, or better, than Sacrifice. Just that it's different. Sacrifice has more intricate systems in its souls and mana stuff than Brutal Legend, and it places much more emphasis on micromanagement and unit formations. Despite some similarities, they ARE different games, and they do play very differently.

@1ntrinsicator: I made my way from beginning to end through all the 'rts' sections by just setting a rally point in front of the enemy base and buying units over and over whilst reading a book, it's a poor excuse for an rts and adding world exploration and some god of war style combat in to spice it up did nothing to make it feel like a better package. the world exploration just resulted in doing some incredibly repetitive side quests but funnily enough that's where I found the littlest bit of difficulty, I liked the aesthetic and what they were going for, if the game had been more focused and less scattershot with it's constituent parts I would've enjoyed it alot more.

I hate Jack Black with a passion, but really liked his performance in Brütal Legend. He's pretty understated in that game actually.

@Freshbandito: Fair enough but that has nothing to do with the quality of the gameplay. That's just about how difficult the single player is. You've found a way to exploit it, totally breakinng the game and making it not fun? Good for you, if you want to do that, but that doesn't have any effect on how fun the game is when played properly. And apart from anything else, the single player is really a kind of tutorial for the multiplayer, where something like that wouldn't work at all. So I don't really get what your point is.

@1ntrinsicator: problem was that trying to play the game 'properly' (?) I just got incredibly bored (personal opinion), I don't believe the single player being a tutorial for the multiplayer should ever give a game a pass for stodgy single player (again, personal opinion). I straight up didn't enjoy the game, you did and reasons for people to like it are just as valid as my reasons for disliking it when they're based on our opinions. I'm just saying the "but there's alot of stuff mashed together" argument for it being better is flawed, I think it would've been far better if you'd mentioned all the gameplay mechanics in the game and why you think they're good instead of saying they're good just by merit of volume.

I don't know about the game, but anyone that can't stand Jack Black is OK in my book.

Personally I don't like Jack Black as a personality/actor.

But as a voice I like him a lot actually. For example in Kung Fu Panda and in Brutal Legend.