Brutal Legend is the newest game from game designer Tim Schafer, maker of sleeper hits Grim Fandango and Psychonauts. It focuses on Eddie Riggs, a Heavy Metal Roadie who's swept away to a magical land where all of the mythology of heavy metal is fully realized. Along the way he must save his Metalhead companions, thwart the minions of Gothic Metal, and eradicate the demonic forces of the Tainted Coil.
Brutal Legend is primarily a real time strategy game, with a lot of driving segments, and a side-mission structure much like Assassin's Creed. The true nature of the game is probably a surprise to most people who haven't played it, as the game shows itself off as a hack and slash platformer game, but that really couldn't be further from the actuality of the game. Brutal Legends is an RTS. Playing the game like a Hack and Slash Platformer, particularly in the RTS segments is a good way to die - and it's not a platformer, as Eddie Riggs cannot jump, other then leaping tremendous heights into or out of his car, and flying in the RTS segments.
So that's out of the way, it's an RTS, but is it a good RTS? I'm not sure, I'm not a very good judge of RTS's, as I'm not very good at them, but one thing Brutal Legend suffers from is a lack of mouse controls, or a decent minimap. Instead, your Avatar (Eddie Riggs in the single player campaign, but there are two others - Diviculous and Drowned Ophelia (spoiler warning, woops)) has the ability to fly at ridiculous speeds. Selecting units for specific tasks can be difficult, mainly because it's done by holding down the Y button, and dragging a tiny reticle over the individual units you want to select. It's really clunky.
Speaking of Clunky, I'll get back to controlling your Avatar Directly in combat now. The actual fighting techniques that your character gets are awkward to use in the heat of battle, and mostly don't do very much. Where eddie shines is his ability to use magical solos (creating varied effects from creating a rally point to dropping a huge flaming lead zeppelin down on your enemies), and double teaming with your units. Each double team ability has its own uses, and almost all of them are used at some point during the game's single player campaign. These are all very powerful and quite useful, although some are situational.
The game has 3 factions, but only one campaign. Besides Eddie's band, Ironheade (With an E on the end, so people know they mean business), there are the the Drowned Doom and the Tainted Coil. The Drowned Doom have many units who's sole purpose is to debuff their enemies, and the tainted coil have weaker units but have some ability to summon them right to the battlefield. I haven't had much time to play with these factions, but they seem just as deep as Ironheade, even considering their sole role as opposition in the campaign.
Now we get to the game's allure (to me at least), the single player Campaign. Brutal Legend is one of the most fully realized Heavy Metal themed worlds anyone could possibly imagine. Several gods of the genre have terrific cameos - Ozzy Osbourne plays himself as the Guardian of Metal, a dark man in a lava pit who sells you upgrades. Lemmy "Kill Master" Kilmeister from Motorhead is the story's healer - using the music of his bass strings to heal the wounded. Brian Posehn playing himself as a hunter of wild Beasts of Heavy Metal. Rob Halford from Judas Priest has several cameo roles in the game, including the game's first villain, General Lionwhyte, a character based glam rock hair bands of the 80s. The names of the Main Characters are also references to Metal Legends - Lars and Lita Halford (Lars Ulrich, Lita Ford and Rob halford) and Eddie Riggs (Eddie Van Halen, and Eddie the Head, mascot for Iron Maiden).
The game bleeds metal from every oriface, then makes some new ones to bleed more metal from. The games characters, units, areas, landmarks are all based on Heavy Metal Imagery, Iconography, and Myth. The Creation Myth for the world of Brutal Legend is like something out of Metallocalypse, and could be sang by any of the great classic heavy metal bands. The game includes a playlist of over 100 songs from every subgenre of metal, to fit the different factions and locales.
The game is very funny, although it doesn't lose itself or its message for the sake of humor. Jack Black's voice acting is topnotch, although occasionally the tone in his voice is off from one line to the next. Almost every punchline in the game is delivered by Jack Black himself or Alex Fernandez playing the role of Mangus - Ironheade's Impromptu Sound Engineer.
This review is getting really long winded so I think I need to wrap it up. Should you check out Brutal Legend? Do you like Metal? If the answer is yes, and you play video games, then it's a no brainer. It'll turn off non-metal fans, and the game might be a little hard to get used to for some, but it's a pretty deep multiplayer game with a pretty damn good Single Player campaign ontop of that.
A few problems I have is the game feels rushed near the end - there isn't really a third act. The Second Act ends, and almost immediately the game ends. The game's difficulty seems to jump up and down.. Some of the side-missions are repeated too many times, and others, which were interesting, are never seen again. Eddie controls like a drunk beaver when he's not in his car or flying in the RTS segments.
I think I covered the rest of my issues. I'm going to give this a tenative recommendation. I really enjoyed it myself, but it's definitely a niche market they're going for with this one - Metal fans who like a decent strategy game.
