So, I got to thinking: I should really stop fucking around with Cook, Serve Delicious, Total War: Rome 2, and Sins of a Solar Empire. I should start clearing out my Steam backlog. The first game I tried to take off my list was Bulletstorm. Well, it turns out that game doesn't work anymore because GFWL is down. It felt like cheating when I changed the category to my "done with" section, but now there's one less game on the list, and still plenty to go.

Alphabetically adjacent to this was Brutal Legend, another game I'd been holding onto for much too long. Have you ever had a game or a book you procrastinated finishing because you didn't want it to end? This was me with Brutal Legend, except instead of procrastinating the end, I was procrastinating the beginning. I knew that this strange convergence of heavy metal fandom and video games was doomed never to be repeated after its poor sales, and I somehow knew that I would both love what the game stood for while not loving what it was.

I think that most of the ink that needs to be spilled about this game already has been, so I won't talk about how the RTS section was underdeveloped and the character action was unsatisfying. I won't talk about how it feels like an act was stripped out of the game. I just want to talk about one thing - how fucking effective was all that metal they played in the background? When it wanted you to race, they put on some Motorhead or Megadeth and you wanted to race. When Ophelia drowned, they played Ozzy Osbourne and man, it was creepy (I wanted to link this video, but YouTube has blocked the audio on videos containing it). When you fought the second to last battle they played In Flames, and it was epic.

I want to give credit to the artists for what they did with the world. It was lovingly crafted, but funny in a glib way at best. I would go as far as to say the things that made this game enjoyable are 25% Jack Black and 75% the heavy metal they play in the background. It's so easy. And it seems like I may never get the chance to observe it at work again. Say what you will about Double Fine - the game they delivered was the game that they made, and no amount of cut content would have changed its mechanics. The real tragedy of Brutal Legend is that metal had its day in video games, and now, it seems, it is dead.