Tim Shcafer delivers a Brütaly awesome world.
It feels like so long ago that we first heard of the epic, Metal themed, Brütal Legend. Revered game developer Tim Schafer's (Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts) latest project. And the game has changed a lot over development.
From the moment I picked up his trusty double-edged battle axe, to his mighty guitar, Clemente, I felt the game blaring its metal-inspired landscape and soundtrack directly into my cranium. It gets the cake as far as creativeness goes in high-production-value games so far this year. There is no doubt about that. But is its metal driven creativity enough to keep some unfortunate side effects of "new" and "different" from showing up? Afraid not.
And of course, as this is a PS3 port, there are some problems, but they're small. We'll get to those. Let's get down to the nitty gritty shall we?
-_-_-Story-_-_-
Story is one thing this game does well, but it doesn't do it for a long enough span of time. It seems that Double Fine (Shafer's Company) decided to take the direction of spending more time on Multiplayer, and cutting the story short. If you stick mostly to the main story, the singleplayer campaign will run you around 8 hours your first time through, less is also quite possible.
However, the story is so well written, with it's only major setback being that the story's pacing goes a little out of whack at the end. The characters have generally great personality and voicework.
The story will have you taking our main man, Eddie Riggs (voiced by Jack Black), a roadie, on a trip back to the "Age of Metal". To meet characters ranging from sexy Ophelia to the suspicious Lita to the Guardian of Metal, Ozzy Osbourne himself. All while you go on a rock tour to liberate humanity from evil oppression. Sounds pretty metal, doesn't it?
-_-_-Gameplay-_-_-
Gameplay is where we have some issues. The big one I'll throw out there, is the side missions. They are extremely repetitive. Like, really bad. Also- the game does a lot of expecting you to figure stuff out on your own, or gets alarmingly more difficult.
Not only that, but it does an odd mish-mash of RTS, Action-Adventure and Rhythm. Complete with upgradable car and open world. Now that might sound horrible, but when you get the hang of things well enough, things start to click together-and suddenly you're amassing large armies, keeping them buffed, double teaming, and generally just owning. The trick is to play the game exactly how the devs expect you to. It is, however, definitely not for everyone. And can quickly lead to frustration.
-_-_-Graphics-_-_-
While perhaps technically underwhelming, the graphics are indeed beautiful. The guys at double fine did an absolutely astounding job creating an entirely unique world of metal. From the tree's with exhaust pipes for branches, to the guitar statues to the engines that rise out of the ground to serve as doors to Ozzy's place. Tim's favorite thing to say at one point was "If it's in the game, we want it to fit on a Heavy Metal album." - it's the truth
(what I understand to be) A PS3-only issue, the screen shakes, seemingly randomly. This is mostly a problem during cutscenes, as otherwise often goes unnoticed.
-_-_-Sound-_-_-
Well, where to start? The voice acting is all very superb, Jack stealing the show, delivering his lines better than anyone else probably could. If you have a thing against Jack, rent this at least- he didn't write it, so you don't have to worry about "his sense of humor" or what not. The soundtrack is 100 songs thick, all licenced Heavy Metal music from various artists in the genre, with some odd choices as well. However, the music remains awesome throughout.
(what I understand to be) A PS3-only issue, the songs will randomly skip from time to time. Not a big deal.
-_-_-Multiplayer-_-_-
The multiplayer, well, is what it is. After you beat the game, if you liked the stage battles, this is most likely where you'll find yourself experimenting (as you can now play as two of the major enemy factions from the single player). However, the matchmaking is atrocious, at least for the PS3. It works, when it wants to, and that's about it. And considering how this was pushed as a major part of this game, it's nothing shy of disappointing to see it in the state it's in right now. I don't know if it's PSN or if it's Double Fine, but it needs fixing.
-_-_-Overall-_-_-
Overall Brütal Legend manages to be just what it was meant to be. Whether or not your final judgement of the game is positive or negative, Brütal Legend will stand tall. Axe in hand. And if you can trudge through the muddy matchmaking, you might just find a deep and well balanced multiplayer as well, who knows?